WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Sean McDowell, you just had a three hour debate with eight, arguably nine Mormons. 2 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:09.000 Yes. 3 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:20.000 We're still arguing about whose Jesus is the best Jesus. We're here to discuss the LDS doctrine of creation and how it's false and unbiblical. Defend yourself. 4 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:43.000 Speaker D: Okay, um, yeah, so basically the, uh, LDS doctrine of creation is true. The present, like, um, I guess you would go to like Einstein or something, but the present, like almost doesn't exist. I've talked to my past self and I think I can talk to my future self. So we're all here at the same time. In the present moment is like how you're experiencing your conscious reality. 5 00:00:43.000 --> 00:01:05.000 But we take modern biblical scholarship and the tools that we use and we apply it to the Book of Mormon. I think, I assume you would agree with me that is going to gut it of its historicity. So I think what you think helps you out over here on Genesis is going to come back and bite you over there. Tell me why I'm wrong. 6 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.000 Joseph Smith is not a true prophet. 7 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:27.000 You were saying Joseph Smith was not a true prophet. But if you're going to say that there's explanations that need to be given to explain how some of these miraculous revelations were received with the happiness letter, then you very well know that historians debate who is the original author. There is no, uh, original manuscript. 8 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:33.000 And why did general counsels cite it at least half a dozen times specifically from Joseph Smith? 9 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:36.000 Uh, that's a great question. That's a phenomenal question 10 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:37.000 they have. 11 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:44.000 But I'm just saying, if you're going to speak as if it's a historical fact, it's done, it's settled. That's a disingenuous argument. I'm not arguing 12 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:49.000 whether they do. But to call it disingenuous, I think is completely. Well, I'm just saying 13 00:01:49.000 --> 00:02:02.000 Joseph is out there making claims that God gave him a command through an angel to go and dig up gold plates and translate it by the gift and the power of God. That either happened or it didn't. Jesus, uh, Joseph, 14 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:03.000 I agree with you. 15 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:11.000 Joseph is either a con man or he is possessed by Satan to do Satan's work. Right? Yeah. Or. 16 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:12.000 Yeah, 17 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:14.000 I'm just saying from your position. I'm just saying from your position. 18 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:15.000 Right. 19 00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:19.000 Yeah. He's either. What? He said he was a prophet of God. 20 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:21.000 Why couldn't it be both on some level? Why is have to be one or the other? 21 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:25.000 Oh, because a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. Jesus Christ. Why 22 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:32.000 can't somebody be a con man and affected by Demons at some point. I don't see why it has to be one or the other is, sorry, this is your time. 23 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:33.000 Yeah. 24 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:55.000 The Bible teaches that there is one God who exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You disagree? Let's hear it. I'd unfortunately never been able to have a Christian explain to me the Trinity without engaging in an absurdity or in a heresy. 25 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:03.000 When Christ is accused of blasphemy for saying I am the Son of that he's the Son of God. He says, isn't it's written in your scriptures that you're gods 26 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:04.000 referring 27 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:12.000 to psalms. So why would you, uh, why is it blasphemous for saying I'm the Son of God when your scriptures say that you are gods? 28 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:34.000 The reason why you don't want to use the argument the name of the Father, Son and Spirit, not the names, is because, again, you're reading the bible like a 21st century American. But the way this word is understood, it's by the authority of the Father, Son and Spirit. That's what name means in this context. You know, in that sense, you know, you sound very much so like a Latter Day Saint. 29 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:36.000 You're a good debater. I like that. 30 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:45.000 Well, he really doesn't like it, so he wants to dance around some discussion on it. Like, truly, it's interesting that you largely agree with Latter Day Saints. 31 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:47.000 I don't largely agree with Latter Day Saints. 32 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:48.000 So 33 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:48.000 no one 34 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:52.000 watching this, uh, from a third party would necessarily agree with that as much as you might think, 35 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:58.000 well, I will let them vote, but I just have to point out again, it's now officially nine against one. 36 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:07.000 And I watched the whole thing and we're going to talk about it and break it down. Good. Um, first off, just for those who didn't see it, perhaps like, what was this thing? 37 00:04:07.000 --> 00:05:04.000 So there's been this trend online, I know you're well aware of, of like 1 versus 10, 2 versus 8. It's exploded politically, religiously, philosophically. And some of them are in the realm of religion. And so the Sean Kelly podcast, He's not a Christian. Digital social hour. I was actually out there this summer debating Michael Shermer on the existence of God and he dropped the idea, said, hey, what do you think about debating 10 Mormons? I said, I just finished a debate with Shermer. I need to think about this and let it sit a little bit. Yeah, but the idea was, uh, people love it online because it's always like, who's going to get this guy? Builds intention and drama. And if it's done. Right. You can cover a lot of substance within that time. And so I came up with three prompts over time. And my son, who's here watching this partly encouraged me. Like, dad, just do it. I was like, all right. Amidst everything else I got going on, I'll debate these eight or ten Mormons. 38 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:23.000 I think it went really well. Okay. I thought it went really well. And just to start off with, for everybody who's watching, you can. I'll link below the actual debate. You can check the whole thing out. But the three prompts, let's just mention what those are. And then we're going to play clips from the debate and we're going to discuss Mormonism and Christianity and sort of like, where are things right now? Because Mormonism is changing. 39 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:24.000 Totally. 40 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:31.000 It's a changing. Yeah. And some of the stuff that I could have said about it 20 years ago when I was learning about it myself, I can't say anymore. 41 00:05:31.000 --> 00:05:32.000 I agree. 42 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:47.000 Yeah. So, okay, the prompts were. The first one was the LDS doctrine of creation is false and unbiblical. And, um, what. We'll get into more details about this, but really, just briefly, you can explain more later. But what is the LDS doctrine of creation? 43 00:05:47.000 --> 00:06:42.000 So this is really a clear dividing line between Latter Day Saint theology and between just orthodox historical Christian theology is that we hold creation ex nihilo, that God created out of nothing. So nothing is not some substance that God used to make something. He literally spoke existence into existence. The creation doctrine, which goes back all the way to Joseph Smith and as far as I can tell, has been held consistently within LDS teaching up to the present, it's affirmed, is that God and matter are both eternally existent. And he uses this matter that exists and forms it into the world and the universe as we know it. So when we talk about creation, we're talking about God bringing into existence and forming. They're talking about forming, not bringing into existence, at least in terms of the matter itself. 44 00:06:42.000 --> 00:07:40.000 Yeah. So God's like the, uh, potter who has access to this clay. He digs up or whatever, and then he forms it into something new. That's the LDS understanding of creation. Yeah. Nothing created, nothing destroyed in the Christian sense. And so, um, okay, the second prompt, and we'll get into that and still clips from that and everything. The second prompt was the Bible teaches there is one God who exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And of course, the doctrine of the Trinity between Mormonism and Christianity is a major issue of disagreement. Although what really struck me is how repeatedly Your interlocutors. Right. That the Mormons that you're discussing it with wanted to treat it like it was a very minor issue of disagreement. One of them was saying, we're 99% in agreement, we'll talk about that stuff. But it was, uh, that was. I thought that would happen. When I heard you were going to do this, I was like, yeah, they're going to want to present themselves as we are, just another version of Christianity. 45 00:07:40.000 --> 00:08:21.000 So there's multiple things going on here in a debate like this. One is the strategy that people adopt and the other is the content itself. So part of the strategy that I've seen, a larger trend within Mormonism is to minimize the differences and gaps between us, almost like from a separate religion to another denomination. So it's a strategic move to say you're basically Mormon, you agree with me. And it came up a few times, the dialogue. It's a smart move. I'd probably do the same if I was on their side. But what I intentionally didn't use is trinitarian language. So there's two things at play here. There's what does the Bible teach? And I would argue the Bible teaches that there's one God who exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 46 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:26.000 Right. You avoided, for instance, you avoided phrases like, uh, one being. 47 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:27.000 Yep. 48 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:29.000 You avoided phrases like persons 49 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:30.000 totally. 50 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:31.000 And you avoided citing a creed. 51 00:08:31.000 --> 00:09:08.000 Yeah. And that's not because I disagree with the creed. But these creeds are follow ups from the biblical teaching. Especially, uh, when a range of different beliefs are entering in and they're saying we better formalize and codify what the Bible says. Hence the doctrine of the Trinity. So I think the doctrine of the Trinity, I think they got it right and it's biblical, but I was totally avoiding that and just simply saying whatever philosophical model you come up with, it's going to have to map onto the Scriptures if you hold biblical authority. So one God and then Father, Son, Holy Spirit is how that God is presented. 52 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:11.000 Okay. And we'll play some clips from that because this is. It gets hairy. It 53 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:12.000 does. 54 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:34.000 That part of discussion gets hairy. And it's good to showcase it because it's an issue that comes up a lot. Also, when you're dealing with, uh, witnessing to Islam, uh, Muslims, the issue of the Trinity will come up repeatedly, reliably. So it's good to be able to talk about that stuff. Okay. The third one was Joseph Smith is not a true prophet, which is like fighting words, you know, 55 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:35.000 100%. 56 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:44.000 Yeah. But, um, why did you pick that as A prompt. And why didn't. What other prompts, I'm curious, did you avoid? You were like, I won't do this, I won't do that. 57 00:09:44.000 --> 00:10:33.000 Oh, I don't know if I avoided any prompts. A lot went through my mind. Like, I did think about putting on the Book of Mormon, analyzing that historically. I thought about the Book of Abraham. I thought about the identity of Jesus, thought about grace versus works. But a lot of the prompts I picked were what are ones that people have not talked about and debated. And grace and works, people have debated that endlessly. Book of Mormon people have debated that endlessly. Creation x Nihilo vs Kratio ex materia has not been debated and discussed, at least on YouTube. I didn't think the Trinity had in the way I tried to approach it. And then Joseph Smith not being a true prophet. Of course, there's a lot of debates about that, but I think my argument was unique, and I don't think either of the people I presented it to even understood what the argument was. 58 00:10:33.000 --> 00:10:46.000 Yeah. Okay. This happened a number of times. I'm tracking with you as you're sharing, and I noticed that. And first, okay, before I say what I'm about to say, you want to say any nice things about the guys that you were going. You were discussing this stuff with? 59 00:10:46.000 --> 00:11:22.000 Oh, I do. Oh, for sure. Look, I totally felt respected by these guys from the moment I walked in. They were almost all there. A few of them got up and shook my hand. They asked me about my family. I mean, I've seen debates online with some of the people in mind and a lot of people not with Christians. And sometimes I just cringe more so at the Christians than I do at the Latter Day Saints. That's one of the reason I did this, is hopefully to try to show kindness to people while you differ. And so I never felt in this that I was disrespected. There was. There were some light moments. I think they were enjoying it. So I only have positive things to say about the experience. 60 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:27.000 Yeah. And I want. I want to say that because I don't want to just be like, oh, these fools, or, no, that's not what we're saying. 61 00:11:27.000 --> 00:11:28.000 Yeah. 62 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:43.000 Um, there were a number of times where it appears to me as though the person you're talking to could not understand what you were saying. And it led me to think, like, did they get your prompts ahead of time? Or did they find out in the studio, like, as they're recording what your prompt was? 63 00:11:43.000 --> 00:12:03.000 Oh, they definitely did not. Get the prompts in the studio. This has happened on a lot of these shows, which is not fair to people. Now, some people have given the prompts, like, months ahead of time. I didn't really narrow my prompts down until about two weeks out. So I promised. A couple of them emailed me. I was like, two weeks out, minimally, I'll knock this thing out and send it over to them. So they had it two weeks ahead of time. 64 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:29.000 So. Okay. I think then what maybe would happen, tell me if you think this is right, is that they read your prompts and they projected what they thought you were meaning by that, but didn't quite understand what you were saying. Uh, you're very careful, your thoughts are very specific. So you're sharing these things. And in times, uh, the first 30 minutes, you spent almost the whole 30 minutes trying to explain your position and it not being understood. 65 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:30.000 Yeah. 66 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:39.000 And that was a bit of a. I mean, it's not what you're wanting when you. When you have these debates and discussions because you want more substance. Not to just sort of reiterate. No, that's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. Which happened a lot. Yeah. 67 00:12:39.000 --> 00:13:55.000 So the difficulty of the prompt is it has to be concise and you can only say so much. So there's a trade off between giving all the details and being like, that's a paragraph, not a prompt. So I did suspect that when I said Joseph Smith is not a true prophet, that they would think that I was saying, there's this office that is open and maybe Joseph Smith filled it, maybe he didn't. Let's look at the arguments that he's a false prophet or a true prophet. I suspected they would go there, but that's not my argument. And as far as I'm aware, I gotta give huge kudos to my friend Kyle Beshears, who's written, I think, a great book on 40 questions about Mormonism. We were talking about this, and he goes, this is an angle that has not gotten a lot of debate and discussion. And so we kind of talked about it together and came up with it. So I also think people come into a debate and they have a preset speech. They want to catch me in terms of what they think I'm saying and will win. I don't fault people for that. Everybody comes in, you have short time, you got to get right to the point. But you also have to be able to pivot and you have to adjust arguments that other people are making and if I'm the 1 versus 10, you have a certain privilege of coming up with the prompts and saying what the argument is. So they're gonna have to be willing to pivot some. 68 00:13:55.000 --> 00:14:13.000 Yeah, it's actually very empowering to be the guy coming up with the prompts if you do it well and you've prepared well. And I think you did. So, okay, we're gonna dig into these specifically. We're gonna play some clips. And the first set of clips, as I understand it, is related to the last prompt. The, um, Joseph Smith is not a true prophet. Is that right? 69 00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:33.000 So I flipped it because the first one spent almost half the time on the first prompt, and then we crunched the second and the third prompt. I actually wish we had the most time on that. But I moved from creation to the character of God to Joseph not being a true prophet. So there's a logical flow there. So I figured we start here with the reverse, and if we don't make to creation, so be it. 70 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:49.000 Okay. And you were, as I understood it, this prompt, you were defending it by saying basically, Joseph Smith is not a true prophet because the specific kind of prophet he claims to be is something that doesn't exist post Christ. Is that. 71 00:14:49.000 --> 00:15:11.000 Yeah. So here's basically what my argument was. I'm saying Joseph Smith claimed to be a capital P prophet. He spoke with that active voice of God in some letters, and I have a whole bunch of other commentary. We don't even get to where he speaks to an active voice. That arguably goes beyond what even Paul did. 72 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:15.000 Yeah, that was an interesting point you made in the debate beyond Paul. And I was like, oh, yeah, you know, they don't. 73 00:15:15.000 --> 00:16:25.000 And he totally conceded, by the way. I concede that he made arguments beyond Paul, and nobody pushed me on this, but I could walk through, if you want to, some of the distinctions between how Paul would speak prophetically and how Joseph Smith would speak prophetically. But I'm basically saying, just like there's three offices in the Old Testament. You have the prophet, you have the priest, and you have the king. Well, Jesus is the king. We don't need a king to play the role that a king played under the Old Covenant. Jesus is the king, and they called him King of the Jews. So somebody shows up and says, I'm king of the Jews, It'd be like, no, actually, Jesus is. Somebody else has taken that role. Well, high priest in Hebrews, it's very clear that Jesus is the high priest. We don't need a high priest anymore because we have an indestructible life. The person of Jesus, who's God in human flesh, paid that penalty once for all and is interceding for us, so to speak, in heaven. So somebody shows up and says, I'm the high priest, you'd say, you didn't get the memo that that office is not open anymore. Jesus is holding that office. 74 00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:27.000 And Joseph Smith did make that claim. 75 00:16:27.000 --> 00:17:14.000 He made a whole bunch of claims. Now, my argument is not that specifically tied to the king or the high priest, but the prophet, like he claimed to be the prophet. Not just a prophet like we see in First Corinthians, chapter 12. Not just a prophet that we see like in Ephesians, chapter 4. I still believe there's an open gift of prophecy. But the office of the prophet is what? I don't think there's any scriptural teaching or remains post, like at least the apostles, depending on how we characterize that. And so when Joseph Smith shows up and says, oh, I'm that kind of prophet, and there's at least two doctrine and covenants where he says, I am like a Moses for the modern day. Specifically says he's Moses. 76 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:39.000 Yeah. Which. Which has messianic implications because Jesus is the prophet like Moses, that they were waiting on who had not appeared. Even when the other prophets in the Old Testament showed up, they were not the prophet like unto Moses. Jesus shows up. He is the greater Moses, so to speak. Right. And he fulfills that. So to use that phraseology is to take a biblical messianic position that Jesus has and claim it for himself. Yeah, 77 00:17:39.000 --> 00:18:34.000 Beautifully said. I think that's right. So what role did Moses play? God would speak through Moses to the people. And only Moses could see God face to face. Right. Doesn't actually have a face. Another issue we could circle back to. But it meant intimately with God, and he could approach God. But when the temple is torn and Jesus pays the debt for sin, what happens? It says Jesus returns back to the Father, sends the Holy Spirit, and now we have direct access to the Father. We don't need a prophet of that magnitude or that kind. There's lowercase P, profits. And I could circle back to some of the differences, if that's helpful. But there's even some doctrine and covenants where Joseph Smith makes the point that there would be one person who would hold that office. I mean, one distinct person. 78 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:35.000 Right, right. 79 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:37.000 And he claimed to hold that, 80 00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:39.000 um, which became the president's. The first president, 81 00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:41.000 which becomes the first presidency. Because 82 00:18:41.000 --> 00:18:59.000 they. Because they. They're current. For those who don't know their current president at any age in history of the history of Mormonism is the prophet, the spokesman of God. He's the official prophet. Then you've got the quorum of the 12. They're the 12 apostles. So it's a whole church government philosophy that exists that started with Joseph Smith. Yeah. 83 00:18:59.000 --> 00:21:21.000 And I think there's a lot of problems when you look in the early church of not setting up there to be another prophet, specifically of the kind of Moses. Mhm. I think there's reason to believe the apostolic authority, and again the capital P profit position shut down and stopped and was not continued. So I've been trying to think of a good analogy. Maybe this is not the best one, but if I came to you, I said, I'm going to give you five reasons why I'm an officer in either the Union or the Confederacy. You would say, john, that office, that position is closed. Right. That war was fought, you know, 100 and some years ago. That's it doesn't matter how good you think your evidence is, there's not that office that's even available anymore. So as we got into the debate, I make a couple arguments. I say, all right, let's just assume that this position is open. I think Joseph Smith still fails all the tests for profit. But you haven't answered my contention that the kind of prophet he claimed to be is not one that's open to Jesus, is fulfilling that role. And I would point towards Hebrews 1:1 really clear. Like in the past, long ago he spoke to the fathers through the prophets. Now he speaks through his son. Mhm. So if prophecy continues in the New Testament and again lowercase P, then this has to be different than the kind of prophecy that Hebrew one one is speaking about, that that God spoke in the past through this kind of prophet. That prophet, there's no reason to believe could exist or does exist, even though lowercase prophecy does exist. And I can say one more thing about this is of course there's debates within the church about whether the gift of prophecy is just speaking truth boldly, like before claiming truth, or actually having a word from the Lord. But even denominations that are Pentecostal, like the Assemblies of God will believe that there's prophets, but they'll say there's no office of the prophecy. There's nobody who speaks akin to Scripture itself because that was shut down biblically. And I think even in the early church we see them having deacons and elders, not the office of prophets. 84 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:26.000 So to be clear, you're actually not Making a cessationist argument. 85 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:27.000 That's right. 86 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:45.000 As it comes to. Although you're talking about something ceasing, but. But you're not making a cessationist argument, like, as pertaining to the gifts. Um, is there such a thing as a prophet today? Um, in any sense, you're not saying that you're addressing a specific kind of prophecy or prophet position that is ceased. 87 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:46.000 Exactly. 88 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:58.000 Okay. And I don't think they would have saw that coming. Um, I didn't. You're probably right. You know, hearing it, I would. I was like, oh, that's interesting. So, um, I don't know if we should play the clip now, the first clip now, or if you wanted to set that up more or explain that information 89 00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:47.000 at all first. Okay. Uh, we can show this first clip. And my team pulled together a few of these. We'll see how many we can get through. But this was with Jackson. He's brothers with Hayden. They have popular YouTube channel. Both of them super. Like these guys, respectful. We've been texting afterwards. Kind of guys I want to hang out with more. And I thought they did a good job. You'll hear in this clip, he's trying to, like, affirm, we think you're doing good work. Even though I'm going to really disagree with you and tell you why you're wrong. Like, I appreciate it. There's a lot of things Christian apologists can learn from the way they approach this. But my argument completely. He didn't understand at all where I was going, didn't pivot, and leans into why Joseph Smith, he thinks, is a true prophet. So finally I said, okay. And I don't. It's in the clip here. I was like, okay, you're not responding to my claim. I'll go ahead and tell you on your terms, nonetheless. Right, 90 00:22:47.000 --> 00:22:48.000 right. 91 00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:49.000 Why I think he's a false prophet. 92 00:22:49.000 --> 00:23:04.000 So you. Yeah. Because you had two legs to this particular section. That's right. One leg. Is this the ceasing of the office that you were talking about. And the other is, uh, failing the tests. And so. Yeah. Okay, so let's. Let's play the first clip. We'll see what. What this one's about. 93 00:23:04.000 --> 00:24:58.000 I agree with you to a certain extent that Paul did not speak in the manner that Joseph did. And what. What I find interesting about this prompt is you're saying Joseph Smith was not a true prophet. But if you're going to say that there's explanations that need to be given to explain how some of these miraculous revelations were received and Specifically, I've learned a lot from your work, that you've done great work, by the way, with you and your father talking about the evidences for the resurrection. And, um, I've learned some great things while you say the. While a single alternate theory might be capable of explaining just one piece of evidence, one, none of the alternate theories can account for all of the evidence. The mere stating of an opposing theory does nothing to prove what this is, what really happened. The burden lies on the shoulders of the one with the opposing theory to demonstrate that this is not only possible, but that each component is a probable explanation of all the facts. And. And what's awesome is that the leaders of our church have been giving the keys to the critics to literally settle this debate once and for all for 200 years. And I have yet to see it be done. Where just as you take the keystone out of the arch, the entire arch crumbles, so too, the entire truthfulness of, and validity of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints hinges upon the Book of Mormon. And if it can be discredited, then the Joe, then the prophet, the alleged prophet Joseph Smith, goes with it. And so the alternate explanation that I need you to give me, if Joseph Smith is not a true prophet, that accounts for all of the evidence of what we know about the dictation process, of what the book actually contains. The witnesses that went to their dying death. Dying death. That's a stupid phrase. There's 94 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:00.000 really only one kind of death. 95 00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:01.000 Exactly. 96 00:25:01.000 --> 00:25:02.000 Spiritual death. 97 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:26.000 Saying that they saw either an angel show them plates or plates, and they hefted them. I need you to give me an explanation that accounts for all of those facts. So I'm asking what, uh, what would be the alternate explanation that accounts for all the facts that we know about the dictation process, what the Book of Mormon contains, the effect it has on the people that read it, and the witnesses that went to their death. 98 00:25:26.000 --> 00:26:46.000 Yeah. So, uh, switcheroo. As far as. As far as, uh, you know, you're offering a prompt, you're trying to defend that prompt, and he just said, I'm just going to set your prompt over here. I'll even acknowledge that some of the things you said are real. And now I'm bringing the Book of Mormon and you have to defend a host of facts, most of which have not even been brought up. Like, I don't even know what he means by all the evidence. So this happened in the debate a lot where I felt like they were arguing, um, from Mormonism. In a sense, everybody argues From a position where they believe they're right. But no, from a culture like within a culture of Mormonism where like, only another Mormon would even know what facts he's talking about potentially. Um, now he didn't have the time to give all the facts. Yeah, but if he's asking you to respond to a whole body of facts, he needs to explain those facts, not just reference them as categories. The dictation process. And I'm like, I just know Joseph Smith put his head in a hat and would, would call out statements that were being written down by his assistant and he had like his whole stone in there and he's like, you know, the dictation process or if you look at the dictation of the Book of Abraham, you're like, really some problems that are going on there, which I've done a video on and I don't think there's rescues for. So anyways, what do you think about this portion? Why did you select this clip? 99 00:26:46.000 --> 00:28:29.000 Uh, so I guess I would say a couple things about this. I appreciate that he's bringing back to the historical question rather than kind of a subjective test. Read the Book of Mormon. Does this, you know, does it give you a sense that it's true? Of course, in Book of Moroni. And then later you see Doctrine of Covenants, I think it's nine. So I appreciate that he's saying there's objective tests we can look at and assess this by it. So I welcome that as somebody who appreciates and wants to value historical evidence in a moment like this, in a debate. If I pivoted and started going down the Book of Mormon with like, there's probably seven minutes left in the whole three hour thing. You open up a whole can of worms. So I had to moderate it for the audience and just say, look, here's what he's done. He's introduced the dictation process and this and this and this, knowing I can't respond to all of it. So if I respond to one, then it feels like, well, he didn't respond to the other three. He wins. Now the dictation process, just really quickly. I actually don't think there's anything remarkable about this at all. There is mathematical work that has been done on the amount people average can write within a certain day how much Joseph Smith, it took him to write the Book of Mormon. And it's remarkable. Like he produced a lot of content, but there's nothing supernatural about it. There's plenty of other people that have produced that amount of content with that period of time, plus you add that he had been telling and practicing these stories for years with his families and others. It's not like he just sat down and wrote or dictated this. It had been brewing in his mind for a long time. So if you just crunch the numbers, it's really not that unique and not that special. The point, though. 100 00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:40.000 So are you telling me that I've never heard this argument? One of the arguments is Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon at such a prolific rate that it is miraculous. 101 00:28:40.000 --> 00:29:03.000 I think they would. I think that's the argument that he's making. The amount that he produced. I forget the word count. I think he said, like, 260,000 words or something. Don't hold me to that. But in the amount of time he produced this, there must be something divine behind it. And then he talked about some of the content that's within it. Now that. That argument, you just break down how long it took. You break down how much people can write per day. 102 00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:06.000 How much of it was plagiarized from the King James Version, 103 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:07.000 from Matthew and from Isaiah, 104 00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:18.000 or how much of it was. Um. Kind of the way it reads sometimes is like verbal stall tactics. I agree with you. Repeating yourself over and over again. Um, yeah, 105 00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:19.000 that's a great point. 106 00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:30.000 So to me, this seems like. But even if none of that was true, you're like, prolific. Writing isn't miraculous, it's just prolific. Right. No one thought Joseph's a dummy. 107 00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:31.000 No. Uh, nobody thought that. 108 00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:32.000 Obviously. Very intelligent. 109 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:47.000 His biography on Joseph Smith, like, it hit me. The one by John Turner. I was like, he's a remarkable human being. I think he's profoundly wrong, but nobody would want to take that away from him. He's remarkable on a lot of levels. But he's missing the point of the prompt here. 110 00:29:47.000 --> 00:29:48.000 Yeah. 111 00:29:48.000 --> 00:30:57.000 He also misused Matthew, chapter seven, and that's why I brought him to the text. So it wasn't in this clip. But he said, matthew, chapter seven. I'm going to read this. It says, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You'll recognize them by their fruits. And he says it, like, four or five times. But what he doesn't explain is, what is a fruit? That's not until you get to verses 21. Really? 22. It says, on that day, this is the context. Many will say to me, lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? So even if somebody said, I wrote the, uh, Book of Mormon and it was a mighty work, that alone is not enough to show that somebody's a true prophet by his own test. It says, and then I will declare to them, I never knew you depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. So it's actually judging a prophet and a prophecy by the way he lives his life. If he's lawless and immoral, false prophet, that's one way. There's others to judge. No, 112 00:30:57.000 --> 00:31:36.000 this is key. I've done all these exposures recently, and this is key is that consistently these people are feeding their appetites. They're using their prophecy to manipulate others, to control others, to build their egos, to get access to women a lot of the time. And, um, Jesus description, inwardly they are, depending on your translation, ravenous wolves or ravening wolves. And, um, so they're looking to. They're among sheep, they're wolves, they're consuming the people for their own appetites is the idea. And Joseph Smith did this. Now, I think that Mormons often think you test Joseph Smith not by the fruit of Joseph, but by the fruit of Mormonism. That's 113 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:37.000 right. 114 00:31:37.000 --> 00:31:43.000 And we have good families and we have a good reputation. Um, and that's actually not what Jesus said. 115 00:31:43.000 --> 00:31:44.000 That is not the test. 116 00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:50.000 So I don't want it. And I also don't want to be cornered where I'm like, oh, so to prove my point, right, I have to like denigrate all Mormons, 117 00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:52.000 right? Yeah, it's a lose lose 118 00:31:52.000 --> 00:32:12.000 approach. It's like, okay, that's unfortunate, but no, I've seen this where these false prophets have very strict policies and high standards that they preach for others. That's actually pretty common, pretty common amongst the South Korean cults, amongst all these different groups. But it's Joseph's fruit in his life that we should look at. And you did look at that. 119 00:32:12.000 --> 00:33:40.000 That's exactly what I did look at. And I wasn't planning on going there in this debate. The point was to show that this office is not open and he couldn't even be a prophet in principle, biblically speaking. But when he didn't, I thought it went right over his head. He didn't understand. I was like, okay, here's why. Based on what the real test is, I don't think Joseph Smith passes this. And that's where I went to something that's called the Happiness Letter. And there's some debate about this. In fairness, there's some pushback and debate whether he actually wrote or not. Of course, A lot of things he wrote, he had ascribed anyways. But the reality is there's some other quotes of ways that he treated women and used the voice of God, according to these women, to get him to be a plural wife with them and arguably to have sex with them. I think that's a piece of it. And so if we're going to look at a false prophet, I went straight to Revelation chapter 2. That in Thyatira, uh, it talks about the prophetess that just seduces people into sexual immorality. Well, that discounts you from being a genuine prophet. And this happiness letter hasn't gotten a lot of press. When I actually, the first I heard about it when I was researching this was like, this is unbelievable. It's a letter that he wrote. I think the evidence points towards him writing this to Signe rigdon, and she's 19 years old at the time, trying to talk her into being a plural wife of his. 120 00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:42.000 Do you. Can you read us? 121 00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:46.000 Uh, I can pull some up if you want me to. Yeah. 122 00:33:46.000 --> 00:34:03.000 I think everybody watching would want to hear what it said. Now, as you're doing that, I want to say in the debate it came up, you brought up whether it was authentic or not as a. To. To cover that question. And you mentioned that it had been used, quoted by authorities in the Mormon Church as authentic, um, in the past. Is that right? 123 00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:15.000 Yeah. So at least as far as I'm aware of, at least 29 times it's been referenced in a general conference. I think the last one was around 2007. But it does put them, um, in a little bit of a 124 00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:25.000 reference. This is why they get the, they call it the happiness letter because of the way they use it frequently. Because it talks about happiness and God's our happiness and stuff. Right. 125 00:34:25.000 --> 00:35:17.000 Well, so there's an opening quote that he'll give. Let me see if we can. We can pull it up here. Happiness is the object and design of our existence within its principle. That's a great quote. I wouldn't disagree with that. That's compelling, it's memorable. That is cited over and over and over again as the prophet Joseph Smith said. As the prophet Joseph Smith, uh, said it's in that letter. But the question is, what's it about? M. And the argument is to her is that she will be happy if she follows God's commands. And God's commands can change. Just like in this letter, his commands change. Uh, killing was okay. Not okay at one point, it's okay at another point, God's commands can change. And she will be happy if she will follow God's commands, which is that she would become one of his plural wives. So you see where this is going. I mean, this, 126 00:35:17.000 --> 00:36:06.000 uh, okay, to me, though, this is the picture for Mormons who might be listening. This is the picture of Mormonism that I see is you have this letter that is quoted as, this is from Joseph Smith, and it's lauded because it speaks of God's happiness. The ideal is there. And we agree with the ideal. We agree with that. But when you look at what Joseph Smith did with his preaching and with his own teaching, he's trying to convince a woman to be another one of his many wives and that they would then sleep together. And I know there's many Mormons who think they didn't, but even the Joseph Smith papers that were released demonstrate it was way worse than even Mormons have been led to believe for a lot of their lives. Uh, Joseph, ah Smith was a sexual predator who used prophecy to lure women into his bed and under his control. And this letter, it seems to be an example of that. 127 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:12.000 And by the way, I would invite anybody neutrally, even read doctrine and Covenants 132, which is the last Doctrine and covenants that he wrote 128 00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:13.000 about his wife, 129 00:36:13.000 --> 00:38:43.000 about how Emma would gladly receive the wives and if not, she'll be destroyed. I mean, it's clearly just. I mean, it's spiritual abuse, his authority. And so one reason when I look at this, and some people have said, well, this wasn't him, he didn't write it. I'm like, we have at least another doctrine of covenants, this, that aims to justify a level of, uh, polygamy. Even though Jacob, too, in the Book of Mormon written earlier, clearly outlaws it and says that it's wrong, there's kind of contradiction that's taking place here, or a shift in theology. So here's three other examples. This is not in the letter, but Mary Elizabeth Rollins, uh, she said, Smith told me about his great vision concerning me. He said I was the first woman God commanded him to take as a plural wife. In 1834, he was commanded to take me for a wife. In 1842, I was forward and sealed to him. Brigham Young performed the sealing for time and all eternity. I did just as Joseph Smith told me to do. Emily Partridge. Joseph Smith said the Lord had commanded him to enter into plural marriage and had given me to him. And although I had got badly frightened, he knew I would yet have him. Lucy Walker. In the year 1842, President Joseph Smith saw an interview with me and said, I have a message for you. I make command of God to take another wife and you are the woman. So when I read the happiness letter, there's some questions that are fair to raise about it, but it's not divorced from a lot of other examples of him doing this very thing. So since he pressed me why I don't think Joseph Smith is a true prophet, that's my answer. I mean, I've read too much on spiritual abuse that I just start to see it. And I know you've done a ton of work on this. When you see people weaponize in scripture to get what they want, that's a really dangerous thing. And by the way, in the book, uh, in Sacred Loneliness by Todd Compton, he talks about, he counts that there's 33 wives of Joseph Smith. And he actually chronicles them very carefully. And you hear in their voice some of their experience, like writing letters, what it was like. And there's a quote, I left it in my bag, I could grab it. But he walks through and talks about the loneliness and the despair and the suffering that so many of these wives experienced. Shouldn't that be a piece of the fruit of the teachings of Joseph Smith? Don't they get a voice? Don't they get to speak? And so to me there's just too much smoke to dismiss this. 130 00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:44.000 Yeah. 131 00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:50.000 Now I can, I mean I can read some of these letters if part of the letter. If you want me to, I'd be happy to. It's up, it's up to you. 132 00:38:50.000 --> 00:39:01.000 Please do. This is fascinating and I think that it's important for uh, especially Mormon Latter Day Saints. You know, I'm not using the word Mormon as an insult. 133 00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:02.000 Yeah, 134 00:39:01.000 --> 00:40:12.000 it's how we all know your group people, a lot of people don't know Latter Day Saint and I'm not going to confuse them. So, um, the uh, that audience who's been raised in the church, you, you should be examining this like I want to examine Jesus. And guess what? When I examine Jesus, I see his incredible character. I see it through and through. And Joseph Smith is the foundation, the singular foundation. You think it's the Book of Mormon, It's Joseph Smith, it's Joseph Smith and he's the foundation of the Mormon Church and of their apparent non Christian beliefs. And I believe that current day Mormons are the victims of a long dead false prophet and they should see who he really was. And the fact that the church has released the Joseph Smith papers and stuff like that has been. It's amazing to me that they even got released. It is amazing, but it's the best opportunity we've ever had to try to demonstrate to Mormons that they've been sold a false Jesus, a false gospel, a false God, and a false prophet, and we want them to be delivered from this. Um, it's not about battling individuals. It's about our command to preach the gospel involves also getting Mormons to leave a false religion and receive the truth of Christ. 135 00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:22.000 Amen. By the way, it's pretty amazing thinking about these different religious leaders and if they would pass the MeToo test of today. Muhammad, zero chance. Oh, 136 00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:23.000 gosh. Yeah. 137 00:40:23.000 --> 00:41:11.000 Charles Taze Russell, one of the early leaders in, uh, Jehovah's Witness movement, definitely would not pass it. Jesus would pass it. Clearly had every chance to take advantage of vulnerable women and only show dignity and respect and care for them. Joseph Smith, here is this letter, and there's a lot of others besides this, but since you asked me to read it, here's what's in the letter. It says, if we seek first the kingdom of God, and all good things will be added. So with Solomon, first he asked wisdom. God gave it to him, and with it every desire of his heart, even things which might be considered abominable to all who understand the order of heaven only in part, but which in reality were right because God gave him sanction by special revelation. 138 00:41:11.000 --> 00:41:17.000 So he's teaching her that Solomon's polygamy was approved by God. 139 00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:35.000 I think that's what he's arguing. By the way, I could pull up Jacob chapter two, and I'll just tell you, this is where some of the contradiction is. And this is written earlier because I've heard. I've heard Latter Day Saints say, well, the Book of Mormon clearly condemns polygamy, and it does. But it was written in 1830. This letter is like 12, 13 years later. 140 00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:36.000 Yeah. 141 00:41:36.000 --> 00:42:15.000 And so people can read the whole chapter. It's 20, at least 28 verses, says, behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines. Which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. Where thus says the Lord, I have led these people forth out of the land of Jerusalem by power of mine arm, and that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph. Wherefore I, the Lord God, will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old says, wherefore, my brothers? Hear me and hearken to the word of the Lord, for there shall be any. There shall not be any man among you who save it, be one wife and concubines, he shall have none. 142 00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:16.000 Yeah. 143 00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:27.000 So no concubines, no plural marriage, condemns David and Solomon, the Book of Mormon. And then clearly we're seeing a pretty radical shift here in DNC132. And of course, in this happiness letter. 144 00:42:27.000 --> 00:42:57.000 Yeah, it's a direct contradiction is what it looks like to me. Um, you've got. Certainly there's complicated, you know, when you go to one passage and another and they may appear to contradict, but maybe don't, but that as a standing proclamation about one wife, no concubines. And then Joseph says, well, God, you know, I can't help it. God told me that you need to marry me and you and you and you and you and you and you. You're already married, but you also need to marry me also in several instances. Yeah. 145 00:42:57.000 --> 00:45:41.000 So there's. There's a few people that did. At least that I've seen, maybe more did response videos to this debate. And one claim I heard is that he's not talking about sex in this happiness letter. I think clearly what we just read shows that it does. But there's another part of the letter. A parent may whip a child, and justly too, because he stole an apple. Whereas if the child had asked for the apple and the parent had given it, the child would have eaten it with a better appetite. There would have been no stripes. All the pleasures of the apple would have been secured. Clearly, we're talking about sexuality. That's a reference to it. Now, there's so much more in this letter. We could get sidetracked here, but basically the happiness comes from following the commandments. And there's unique commandments. God has spoken through Joseph Smith to her, even though it was outlawed in the past, that she should be his plural wife. The reason I had studied this was not to bring any of this up in the debate. I didn't know they're going to press me and ask me, why do you think he's not a true prophet? The reason I brought this up is he moves in the letter itself between the voice of God and his own voice, the active voice. And there's a ton of times that he does this that goes even beyond, like the Apostle Paul speaking in God's voice. So that was one of the main reasons I wanted to bring this up, is so people would see, wait a minute, he's speaking. So I'll give an example at the end of the letter. I've got it right here. He says, uh, I'll read the context. And, oh, Heavenly Father is more liberal in his views and balanced in his mercies and blessings than we are ready to believe or receive. At the same time, it's more terrible to the workers of iniquity, more awful in the executions of punishment, more ready to detect every false way than what we are apt and supposed to be like Him. So he's kind of saying, you get happiness. If not, there's consequences for you threatening her, as I read it. And then he says, uh, he will be equipped by his children. Uh, uh, he is asked, you shall receive it, you shall find it. So he's quoting Jesus, but if you take that which is not yours or which I have not given you, you shall be rewarded. All things according to your deeds. But now, good thing, will I withhold from them. Now he starts shifting. In the very end, he says, the voice of the servant whom I have sent. So he shifts in this active voice of God. That's what got my attention. And there's a ton more examples in DNC and other letters that he wrote where he speaks in this active voice. That's the kind of prophet. I'm like, no, that is not how Jesus speaks today. That office is shut down. 146 00:45:41.000 --> 00:46:07.000 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, um, where should we go from here? I feel like the. What I'd be interested to go is just to say it did shift away from what your original point was about the prophet, the office is not there, um, to being the test of his fruit, which we've talked somewhat about. You gave a breakdown in the debate of, like, how many women and stuff like that. Could you share that now? 147 00:46:07.000 --> 00:46:58.000 Yeah. So there's debate about some of these numbers. Uh, so Todd Compton wrote in Sacred Loneliness. And for anybody who just wants to see the impact in the letters written by many of these wives, just read it. And he starts off by saying, I actually wish we had letters from some of the husbands whose wives were taken in by Joseph Smith and how that also negatively affected them. But if the number 33 is correct, roughly a third, I think it's 11 would be between 14 and 19 years old. So they'd be teenagers. Roughly 11 were polyandrous, meaning they were already married to somebody else. That's how some. And some argue for more, some argue for a few less. But Todd Compton argues. He goes, there's no positive evidence that he didn't have sex with any of the women that he was technically married to 148 00:46:58.000 --> 00:46:59.000 right 149 00:46:58.000 --> 00:48:26.000 now. I can't land that plane right now. And this stuff is debated in a lot of different circles. But this whole debate was not supposed to be about polygamy. That was not the point where I went, uh, but if we're going to talk about what's the test of a prophet, one is Matthew 7 and his life. If this person is immoral and lawless, false prophet. I think, Joe, there's other things we could talk about. We don't need to, but I think he fails that one pretty seriously. The second test biblically, is Deuteronomy 13, when a prophet or a dream or dream arises and gives you a sign or a wonder. So again, they would do miracles, but it says, let us go after other gods, then that person is a false prophet. Now, you and I don't have time to lay all this out, but I think theologically, and you did a great job on your video on this within the past few weeks, where you said, even the Fall itself is viewed as a step up and a transgression, but not a sin. It's a very different view of the Fall. I think there's a different view of creation. There's a different view of the character of God, the nature of salvation. And so I would argue that Joseph Smith failed this prophecy as well by teaching not only a plurality of gods, but different doctrine. And then the third test of Deuteronomy 18, it says if the word of God does not come to pass or come true. And by the way, Deuteronomy 18 is. He's laying out specifically how uh, there would be a greater prophet than Moses who would come. 150 00:48:26.000 --> 00:48:27.000 Yeah, 151 00:48:26.000 --> 00:49:11.000 and of course, that's Jesus. And he's referred to that way in John 1, 6 and 7. He is the prophet. And by the way, there's not a shred of evidence in the Bible that there would be another prophet who would come, like Moses, after Jesus, in some ways that would be, like, anticlimactic. So I'm not only arguing that the prophetic office, we have reason to believe, it's shut down. There's no positive reason to think that such a prophet would come. In fact, the end of Revelation, the next revelatory thing we're waiting for is Jesus to come back. Not a great apostasy, not another, uh, prophet. But I mean, I have a list and LDs, they have their responses to these. I mean, these go on and on. But I think there's a number of false prophecies that were given. For example, 152 00:49:11.000 --> 00:49:12.000 this didn't come up in the debate, Right? 153 00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:19.000 This did not come up. But if I was to walk through why I don't think he's a true prophet. I would add this. We can shift back to these if you want 154 00:49:19.000 --> 00:49:21.000 to. Why don't you just run through a couple examples then? 155 00:49:21.000 --> 00:49:36.000 So really, really quickly there's at least the idea the claim that Jesus would return by 1891 and this is in Smith Hill history of the church where he talked about even within 56 years should wind up the scene of his return. Obviously that didn't happen 156 00:49:36.000 --> 00:50:04.000 Y and that was reiterated by multiple other people until one of uh, Joseph Smith's descendants, then president. I think that there was a quote I had where he said I guess it's safe to say that that's not going to happen because they just kept waiting and waiting and waiting for it to happen. And that's a pretty embarrassing uh, thing to have one of the only prophecies that you actually can test fail. And that's what, that's what happens with Joseph Smith. The prophecies that can be tested fail. 157 00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:53.000 I think there's some other ones we can test too. But you're right. And by the way, when you look at certain Seventh Day Adventist prophecies which emerged in the burned over district in the northeast during this time, Jehovah's Witnesses, there's all these false prophets about Jesus coming back. This wasn't unique to Mormonism. Uh, the other one would be David Patton. This is really interesting. DNC 114. One says verily, Thus saith the Lord, it is wisdom in my servant David Patton that he settle up all his business as soon as he possibly can and make a disposition of his merchandise that he may perform a mission unto me next spring. And it goes on. Well he died that fall in October of 1838 and never went on that mission. Mhm. That's another problem. There's a prophecy of the overthrow of the US Government. The big one everybody talks about is the temple in Independence, Missouri. 158 00:50:53.000 --> 00:50:54.000 Right. 159 00:50:53.000 --> 00:50:54.000 And then 160 00:50:54.000 --> 00:50:55.000 it's still barren land. 161 00:50:55.000 --> 00:51:06.000 It's still barren land. And the civil war being poured out on all nations which is DNC87. Which didn't happen. Now one of the LDS responses I've heard is that these prophecies are all contingent. 162 00:51:06.000 --> 00:51:07.000 Right. 163 00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:27.000 And there's something interesting about that where the Lord says I will destroy this nation and is built in. If they repent, then I won't destroy them. Uh, but the number of prophecies, the range of things that they're about, not just nations, I m think weighs against categorizing all of them through that contingent lens. 164 00:51:27.000 --> 00:51:57.000 Yeah, I think it's reaching because you don't have the justification for. Okay, show me why you think this is contingent other than. Well, because it didn't happen, so it must have been contingent. Um, and, yeah, you could look at Jonah and Nineveh and stuff, but you can justify that much more easily. Easily. That's why Jonah was sent, was to try to get them to repent, you know, that's why he didn't want to go, because he knew it was contingent. And if they repented, you know. But, uh, anyway. So, um, should we jump onto the next clip? I don't want to get. 165 00:51:57.000 --> 00:51:59.000 Sure, yeah. I have a feeling we're not going to get through all these. 166 00:51:59.000 --> 00:52:21.000 We probably won't. We probably won't. But I want to say we didn't tell you guys we're at Living Waters right now. This is their studio. We're drinking out of their coffee cups. Um, and so thank you to the, uh, Living Waters crew. We appreciate you guys. Uh, they offered for us to. They said anytime you're interviewing somebody, I have, like, a little room in my house I do stuff in. You wouldn't fit. The 167 00:52:21.000 --> 00:52:22.000 cat fits, but not me. There's 168 00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:28.000 one camera, there's one microphone. There's very little space. So, uh, they let us use this, and we're grateful for them. 169 00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:29.000 Sounds good. 170 00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:32.000 Yeah. Um, so why don't we play the next clip and we'll see what this one's about. 171 00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:43.000 So in your book, you affirmed that the Father and the Son have separate wills, and you affirm that they have, uh, their own individual, uh, markers. 172 00:52:43.000 --> 00:52:48.000 Which book, by the way? 12 crucial truths. Yes. Okay, sir, I'm not that much older than you, but keep going. 173 00:52:48.000 --> 00:53:47.000 Sorry, Military. All right, so when we say they have the same authority. So that's why it says, going back to that, in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit. It's not like you do one thing by the authority of the Father, another by the authority of the Son, but because they are united, they have that authority that comes from the Father. But I would say that your concept of the oneness of the Father and the Son, I would press you there because I think when you see the oneness, you are adding into the Bible things that aren't intended to be understood, things that were formulated centuries after the Bible was written. When I see oneness, I see in the context of polytheism. They are united, these gods. They don't fight each other. They are together. That's why they have that one authority, which is what we affirm. So we have no dog in that fight, you know, in that sense, you know, you sound very much so like a Latter Day Saint. 174 00:53:47.000 --> 00:54:15.000 Okay, I want to. I want to set up a little bit. As I recall, you argued from the, uh, baptism formula in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that there's one. One name there. One, uh, God. And he's saying, well, that word name really means authority. And it's saying that they have, like, a shared authority. And then he went on to say, uh, he didn't so much defend his view as much as explain his view. Uh, about. About his. His polytheistic. I like that he used the word polytheism. 175 00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:16.000 Yeah, he did. 176 00:54:16.000 --> 00:54:26.000 I appreciated that because I'm m. Like, yeah, that's polytheism. Good. Um, and that their oneness isn't about their nature, it's about their agreement. Uh, effectively, 177 00:54:26.000 --> 00:54:42.000 that's where a lot of the debate is, I think, when it comes down to orthodox Christians and between Latter Day Saints. I thought that was a good response from him in terms of baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that it's about the authority. Now 178 00:54:42.000 --> 00:54:43.000 you 179 00:54:42.000 --> 00:54:43.000 look like you want to jump in. 180 00:54:43.000 --> 00:54:47.000 Well, it's one thing to say it's about this, but that doesn't mean it's not about that. 181 00:54:47.000 --> 00:54:49.000 Exactly. That's correct. 182 00:54:49.000 --> 00:55:02.000 Acknowledging that baptizing in his name is related to his authority does not negate the fact that you were saying, look, there's name singular, and there's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's 183 00:55:02.000 --> 00:55:03.000 exactly 184 00:55:03.000 --> 00:55:07.000 right. It doesn't seem to get beyond target to actually respond to your point, 185 00:55:07.000 --> 00:56:18.000 so I think that's fair. I would bring in another verse that I think I mentioned briefly is Revelation 11:15. It says, the King of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and. And of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. What's interesting is that the throne room is occupied by God and the Lamb, and yet John used the singular in proclamation of the reign. And this is the point that Richard Bauckham brings out. So I would love to see more LDS apologists interact with the work of Hurtado and Bauckham. They're two of the most clear writers, and they are brilliant. We're talking Cambridge and some leading publications they've written over the past 30 years, probably leading in Christology, at least amongst Christians. Bauckham says John is reluctant to speak of God and Christ together as a plurality. John never makes them the subject of a plural verb or pronoun to refer to them both. He wishes to avoid the possibility of polytheism. And that's the key point that I was making. Now, uh, I was not making a philosophical argument for the Trinity. And I think right away they assumed that that's the direction that I would go. 186 00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:21.000 Yeah, you're making a textual argument. 187 00:56:21.000 --> 00:56:55.000 Exactly. So there's the biblical case, and then there's a philosophical model that makes sense of the biblical case. Now, I would argue, and I assume they would agree with me, that any philosophical model we have is going to have to be faithful to the biblical teaching. That's the idea. So I was taking an approach that friend and mentor Greg Koukl took. And, uh, in fact, he was actually at his conference where you told me to get on YouTube. So shout out for Greg. I would not have done that if it weren't for you going back, I don't know, six, eight years, whatever that was. 188 00:56:55.000 --> 00:56:56.000 That's right. The Reality Conference. 189 00:56:56.000 --> 00:57:33.000 It was the Reality Conference. We were chilling backstage, and Greg has a piece called the Trinity is Not a Problem, It's a Solution. So the word Trinity is not in the Bible, of course. It comes from tri3 entity, unity. And it's a model using Greek terminology and language to make sense of what the Bible teaches. And he argues. He says there's three premises. The Bible teaches there is one God. The Bible never speaks of a plurality of Gods. And so we'll leave right there, and then I'll circle back to some others. Yeah, 190 00:57:33.000 --> 00:57:34.000 we'll come back to Elohim stuff later. 191 00:57:34.000 --> 00:58:45.000 There's. Okay, good. There's one God. That's the language. And I've got a ton of passages that teach this. Second, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each divine or properly called God. And then third, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct. So the two mistakes that somebody could make is to adopt a tritheism or say there's three gods or modalism, and deny the distinction between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, a case can be made that Mormons, at least historically, have made both of those mistakes. And there's some debate about this when it comes to modalism. I understand that. I thought we might get into that, but we didn't. A case can be made that there's still about half a dozen passages within the Book of Mormon that have a modalistic teaching of the Father being the Son. Mhm. And Kurt Widmer's written a book on this, and he's gotten some pushback and criticism where he says many of these passages as the Book of Mormon was updated and changed over 3,000 times, by the way. Uh, according to the Tanners, over 3,000 times. They actually took out some of the modalistic teachings, um, that were there originally. 192 00:58:45.000 --> 00:58:46.000 Okay. 193 00:58:45.000 --> 00:59:24.000 The other mistake is tritheism. And this is where I think the Mormon M model is mistaken. And I was quoting from Grant Underwood, super nice guy, retired professor, came on my channel, not YouTube, but on the podcast we had a two hour conversation. Really civil, very professorial. And he's got a quote, he says, he calls it Mormon Trinitarianism, which is interesting. He says it is tritheistic. No matter how emphatically Latter Day Saints emphasize the unity of the three, they still unapologetically confess, to the dismay of classical trinitarians, that the divine persons are three gods. Mhm. That's where the wheels get off the rail to me. 194 00:59:24.000 --> 00:59:25.000 Right. Uh, 195 00:59:24.000 --> 00:59:36.000 and I cited LDS author Charles Harrow, who's like, nowhere does the New Testament speak of gods in the plural reigning in a godhead. And this is capital G, not the Heiser divine council stuff. 196 00:59:36.000 --> 00:59:37.000 Yeah. 197 00:59:37.000 --> 01:00:12.000 In a few New Testament writings, Christ is identified as God with Theos, but never as God or another God. And I didn't get into it, but there are so many quotes. You know, this going back to Joseph Smith through the prophets of just God was once a man. Where is ever there a fought, where is ever there a son without a father? And it's still being taught today. That's where I think they run up against biblically contradicting what the Bible teaches about the character of God. The philosophical model is all downstream from that. 198 01:00:12.000 --> 01:00:25.000 Yes. So this is a part of the debate where what struck me was trying to make it sound like these differences were trivial. Um, we can talk about Heiser stuff like that stuff in 199 01:00:25.000 --> 01:00:26.000 second if 200 01:00:25.000 --> 01:00:41.000 you want to. Um, but one of the guys was like, we agree 99%. And um, things like that. And in my opinion this is. And we talked before you did the debate and I mean my one thought going into it was they want to be Christian. They're not. 201 01:00:41.000 --> 01:00:42.000 You said that. 202 01:00:42.000 --> 01:01:23.000 Yeah. And my opinion on this is that the current Mormon project is not as it pertains to outsiders, is not to convince you that Mormonism is true. It's just to try to get you to believe it's Christian. And um, that I think is the major project that they're undergoing right now. Obviously there's different camps and different groups and stuff within the, within the movement. But um, but yeah, that's where I smelled that right there to like, you're acting like okay, so Joseph Smith shows up. All their creeds are an abomination. Modern Mormon today encounters you on a debate panel and says, you know, Sean, we're like 99% the same. One of them said, it's semantics. He actually said. 203 01:01:23.000 --> 01:01:24.000 He did say that. Yeah, 204 01:01:24.000 --> 01:01:47.000 it's semantics. The difference is here. And I'm like, Joseph Smith, like, all their creeds are an abomination, an offense to God, a disgusting, horrible thing to God. Clearly, Joseph didn't think it was semantics. Right. Um, but modern, modern Mormonism has shifted in this regard. They're trying to at least posture themselves that way. 205 01:01:47.000 --> 01:02:01.000 I think that's right. There's a shift from being a different religion, the only true faith, to being another faith or another denomination that can just help fulfill what you're believing more personally. And more significantly, uh, 206 01:02:01.000 --> 01:02:04.000 like you go from being Christian to becoming Mormon, where you're just Christian plus 207 01:02:04.000 --> 01:03:25.000 Christian plus. I was going to say super Christian in the back of my mind. We won't die in those terms. That's the idea. Here's some quotes I just want to read. This is from an article in BYU Studies, and I, I read it. But what, what this author says, and this is on the BYU Studies website, though Brigham Young clearly affirms that God was once human being like ourselves. Tallmadge, very important speaker, uh, and writer within, within LDS history. Implies it, but doesn't say so explicitly. Widow. It's clear that God progresses in some sense, but he does not commit himself to the claim that God was once a human being. This is the pattern of Latter Day Saints thinking about this teaching from the King Follet sermon movement from clear affirmation that God was once a human being and progressed to become God, to less confidence in how to interpret the teaching and while not denying it and occasionally even embracing it. So there is a movement of understanding some of the teachings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young very differently and denying some of these teachings. I do wonder if The Mormonism, in 10, 20, 30 years, what it's going to look like and what they'll embrace when some of these online influencers get more and more of an audience and the church itself loses some of that authority, what it'll look like. That's a whole separate question. 208 01:03:25.000 --> 01:03:36.000 Yes. So in my view, I like to contrast Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness. So the governing body of the JWS is, uh, cloister control. Close, uh, the walls in. 209 01:03:36.000 --> 01:03:37.000 Yep. 210 01:03:37.000 --> 01:05:04.000 And Mormonism is, uh, Darwinian. It's like evolve, change, navigate these difficult issues. You know, we we, uh, you know, polygamy. I know what Brigham Young said about it. I know he was like, you're not even a Mormon if you're rejecting the doctrine of polygamy. But, um, but that was just for them, you know, and then. And then there's a shift, and then there's. There's the kind of work that I've seen, honestly, a lot of Roman Catholic apologists do, or actually the medieval theologians did this stuff where they'd be like, I guess we're doing this now. Let me try and make that work. Let me go back into our texts and let me try and find a way to make this harmonize. And so I agree with you. Mormonism is shifting and changing. And, uh, if it did shift and change, where it actually gave up Joseph Smith and gave up the theology stuff, but instead it feels like this sort of piecemeal negotiation where we're sort of, you know, um. I don't know if anytime I believe something, if I was Mormon, I need to be like. Like a real Mormon. Like, I can't. I'm like, no, there's innumerable gods. We just only worship one of them. But there's ridiculous numbers of gods. A God had a God. His God had a God. All of them had gods. God wasn't always God. You can become a God. Like, yeah, that's our theology. That's what we believe. And, um, for me personally, I find it difficult to interact with people, people who start overly negotiating their beliefs, and I just. I just go, like. I just feel like I. You're, uh, you're being blown in the wind almost at that point. 211 01:05:04.000 --> 01:05:13.000 So the one thing that I really learned in this debate is how many assumptions we have that many Latter Day Saints don't share. 212 01:05:13.000 --> 01:05:14.000 Yeah, 213 01:05:13.000 --> 01:05:31.000 like the idea of a univocal Bible, which is a big word. A number of them went out of the way to say we don't adopt this, that there's a storyline, that we interpret the Bible as a whole and, and continuity throughout it. It's probably a better way. Like one voice, they. It's a way 214 01:05:31.000 --> 01:05:33.000 of saying the Bible contradicts itself. 215 01:05:33.000 --> 01:06:25.000 Yeah, that's. That's a fair way to. That's a fair way. A fair way to put it. Uh, but of course, I made the point. I'm like, jesus says the Old Testament speaks of me. So it was pointing forward to him. The trick is that there's so many things that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and The province of Saint said into the 21st century that it's like, wait a minute, we can agree to disagree on the age of the earth, we can agree to disagree on the role of women in the church. As important as that is, if you have a prophet saying who speaks from God and saying this is true, and then other people saying differently on things so basic, like the character of God, you've got a problem that theology changing. These are not practices or secondary doctrines. And so going back to Joseph Smith, I actually think more interesting than the King Follett sermon is the sermon in the Grove. 216 01:06:25.000 --> 01:06:50.000 Yeah. Oh, just for people who don't know, the King Follett's sermon is where he like declared very clearly, like, I'm telling you, this is doctrine, this is from God. You know, God was once a man as we are. And all this sort of thing that was traced back to this definitive statement. And I've heard some Mormons try to get away from the King Pulitzer, but I would just encourage anyone who's thinking, I don't think that's relevant to Mormonism. It wasn't authoritative. Read it. Just read it. 217 01:06:50.000 --> 01:07:07.000 Well, here's what's interesting. I learned throughout this is there's. There's at least four accounts of the King Fault sermon that have some differences, but they line up pretty carefully and pretty accurately. In fact, some of the sources I read said this is his most carefully chronicled speech that he gave 218 01:07:07.000 --> 01:07:08.000 at a funeral. 219 01:07:08.000 --> 01:07:58.000 And actually, so actually was at a general conference. It wasn't really at a funeral, but it was tied to King Follet had died and he made some remarks that were tied to. But it's actually at a general conference. Uh, so then there was some articles that came out shortly after this. In the Nauvoo Expositor, he responds with a sermon on the Grove, doubling down in his belief on a plurality of gods. So this one should get more attention in terms of at least what Joseph Smith puts believed. And there's, you know, there's a move today again, we could circle back this, if you want to, to try to say, well, as long as it's not canonical writing, I don't have to listen to what some of these prophets have said through history. It's only when it becomes written down. And I think there's problems with that. 220 01:07:58.000 --> 01:07:59.000 Yeah, 221 01:07:58.000 --> 01:08:20.000 but he says this is in the sermon on the Grove. I think this is 11 days before he was killed. It says, I have always preached the plurality of gods. So this is capital G, at least how it's written down. This is not Heiser gods, this is the plurality of gods, which back to my prompt, I think contradicts the idea that there's one God. 222 01:08:20.000 --> 01:08:21.000 Right. 223 01:08:21.000 --> 01:09:08.000 Uh, he goes, For 15 years, I've done this. Jesus Christ is a separate and distinct, he says person from God, the Father and the Holy Spirit, A, uh, distinct personages and a spirit. These constitute three distinct personages and three gods. Again, Bible never speaks that way. He says, we have three gods anyhow, and they are plural anyhow. There's more to it than this. He said, the God, the father of Jesus Christ had a father. You may suppose that he had a father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? That's a really. He's teaching the eternal progression, potentially, of gods. It seems to be. Now, there's some recent scholars who will say that's not what he's teaching, but that sure seems to be how the Church and other prophets have taken it as the majority position. 224 01:09:08.000 --> 01:09:25.000 I'm skeptical of the word scholar being used to tell me. I can't see what's obvious in front of my face. It's like, come on, you just read what he said. He said it in English. It's not a translation problem. Um, it's right there. Yeah. 225 01:09:25.000 --> 01:10:10.000 And look, here's. I mean, here's quotes I could go on and on about. Brigham Young. He God is our Father, the Father of our spirits, and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are, and is now an exalted being. General authority. Milton Hunter. Mormon prophets have continuously taught the sublime truth that God, the Eternal Father, was once a mortal man who passed through a school of earth similar that through which we are now passing. Joseph Fielding Smith. He was president, 1970-72. God is an exalted man. Some people have troubled over the statement of the prophet Joseph Smith that our Father in heaven at one time passed through a life and death and is an exalted man. Bruce McConkie, 1979. What's interesting is Gospel Principles, which is still on the LDS website right now, is kind of a source clarifying doctrine. It's 226 01:10:10.000 --> 01:10:11.000 like a catechism, kind of. 227 01:10:11.000 --> 01:10:57.000 Yeah, that's a good way to put it. In 1978, it said, what is exaltation? Exaltation is eternal life, the kind of life that God lives. He lives in great glory. He is perfect. He possesses all knowledge and all wisdom. He's the Father, Spirit of our children. He's a creator. We can become gods like our Heavenly Father, capital G. This is exaltation. 1992, the word gods was taken out. So it reads, we can become gods like our Heaven. Or we can become. Let me take that word out. We can become like our Heavenly Father rather than gods. Uh, like our Heavenly Father. So in some ways, when I see this changing, I say, good, this is positive to see change moving forward, but they're still not there. I think in terms of biblically, what the scriptures teach about one God. 228 01:10:57.000 --> 01:10:58.000 Right. 229 01:10:57.000 --> 01:11:04.000 And if you look back and you change radically, it's not enough to just say, don't look over there. You kind of got to say, here's exactly where this is wrong. You 230 01:11:04.000 --> 01:11:05.000 got to repudiate it. Yeah. Uh, 231 01:11:05.000 --> 01:11:16.000 and there's a difference between online apologists and scholars out there, and even BYU speaking apart from the church itself speaking. Those are very different things. 232 01:11:16.000 --> 01:11:42.000 And Mormonism allows for major error in their opinion. Uh, amongst even many of their spokespersons online who aren't. Maybe you're not official. You're not an official president of the church or something like that. But. But they'll often share an opinion where I'm like, you sure that that's a Mormon opinion? So, yeah, it can be. It can be hairy. Okay. Okay. I don't want to get too lost in the weeds on some of these things, but should we play the next clip? 233 01:11:42.000 --> 01:11:44.000 Yeah, let's do it. I'll bring some of this up and some of the other ones. So. 234 01:11:44.000 --> 01:11:46.000 All right. 235 01:11:46.000 --> 01:12:13.000 When Christ is accused of blasphemy for saying I am the son of. He's the Son of God, or the Son of Man is the title that they use. Um, he says, isn't it's written in your scriptures that you're gods referring to psalms? So why would you. Why, uh, is it blasphemous for saying I'm the Son of God when your scriptures say that you are gods, what's the purpose of Christ? He doesn't deny that. And he even says that the Scriptures cannot be broken. Uh, how. How do you. How do you resolve that? 236 01:12:13.000 --> 01:12:14.000 You want me to jump in or. 237 01:12:14.000 --> 01:12:25.000 Yeah, I was just. I'm just recalling how this exchange continued, and you talked about the psalm and talked about Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater, which I agree. But, uh. But, yeah, just take it away. 238 01:12:25.000 --> 01:12:59.000 So I actually, I like Keenan a lot. He's a little bit older, so he had a little bit of an older school Mormonism than some of the younger guys do. You could generationally see some of the differences. And he was afterwards, like, he was super kind talking to my wife and my son, and I was really interested. Like, I enjoyed him a lot. He's very inquisitive I think, and sincere. But he's kind of moving in towards, like, we can become gods. And the scripture teaches this, so that's different than the voices we hear, that I know we can become like God. So I actually appreciated that he was a part of this, to hold that view. 239 01:12:59.000 --> 01:13:17.000 Yeah, I want real Mormonism. Um, I mean, I don't. I don't want anybody to follow it, but I want to address what it really is, because it's just, yeah, obviously it's that you can become a God. That's real Mormonism. If anybody's denying that, like, they're arguing against their own prophets, it just doesn't make any sense. 240 01:13:17.000 --> 01:13:58.000 So I would agree with that. Now, I walked through a response to this in the video. People can watch it, but I just would highlight that Jesus, you know, he's having this interaction with, uh, the Pharisees and the religious leaders at that time. He says, my Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my hand. I and the Father are one. Now, I think Bauckham is right that he's not making the point that we are one in purpose, we are one in unity. He's saying we are one in being. And I think this is likely a reference to the Shema, which Jesus had quoted earlier. Or actually they quote back to him in John chapter eight, 241 01:13:58.000 --> 01:13:59.000 which is. 242 01:13:59.000 --> 01:14:05.000 Which is, you know. Well, let me read it. I'm going to read exactly here. And this is Deuteronomy 6. 243 01:14:05.000 --> 01:14:06.000 Yeah. 244 01:14:05.000 --> 01:14:07.000 So we get it. Really clear 245 01:14:07.000 --> 01:14:09.000 passage about the nature of God in the old testament. 246 01:14:09.000 --> 01:14:15.000 Deuteronomy 6, just to make sure we get it exact. Says hero, Lord. The Lord our God, 247 01:14:15.000 --> 01:14:16.000 Israel. 248 01:14:16.000 --> 01:15:48.000 Oh, thank you. I jumped ahead in this one. Good correction. Thank you. Good correction. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Then he walks through love. Lord, godly heart, your soul, your mind and your strength. According to Bauckham and Hurtado, this is the key passage that really captured late Second Temple Judaism at the time that Christianity emerges that there's one God who alone is the creator and sustainer of the universe, who should be worshiped, period. That was the assumption, and I didn't do it in the debate. We won't do it here. But Bauckham walks through in his research, just all the extra biblical literature just citing one God alone, uh, to back this up. So I think Jesus in John chapter 10, is citing the Shema. His audience would have picked up on that. You're saying there is one God now, how do they respond? It says, the Jews picked up stones to stone him. Jesus answered them. I've shown you many good works for my Father. Which of these are you going to stone me? The Jews answer him, not for good work that we're going to stone you, but for blasphemy for you. Because you being a man. Being. Exactly. We're talking about being here. There's no debate that he claimed to have unity with the Father. Like everybody thinks they have unity with the Father in terms of their purpose. But being a man, make yourself God. So you are only a being who is human. You are not the being who is God. 249 01:15:48.000 --> 01:15:49.000 Yeah, it's about nature. 250 01:15:49.000 --> 01:15:53.000 I think that's what it's talking about here. So Jesus. 251 01:15:53.000 --> 01:16:25.000 And in the context. I love this connection to the Shema, because in the context of there is only one God, and he says we're one. I and the Father are one. You have person, personhood of the Son and the Father, but also oneness in the biblical sense of his nature. His, uh. His, uh. His. Not just I have divinity like he does, but rather there is just one God. It's me. And, um. Yeah, that, that. So what was the. Did this one come out in detail in the debate, or did they get a little cut 252 01:16:25.000 --> 01:16:38.000 off? I gave a little bit of the detail in this one, but I just want to emphasize this again, where Bauckham and Hurtado are so important, they're talking about what's called Jewish monotheism or Yahweh's transcendent uniqueness. I tried to bring some of this in. 253 01:16:38.000 --> 01:16:39.000 Uh, 254 01:16:38.000 --> 01:16:56.000 but he says the element that makes it a unique kind of monotheism is not the denial of the existence of other gods, lowercase cheese. But an understanding of the uniqueness of Yahweh that puts him in a class of his own, a wholly different class from any other heavenly or supernatural being. Even if these are called God. 255 01:16:56.000 --> 01:16:57.000 Right. Uh, 256 01:16:57.000 --> 01:18:05.000 or gods. It's Yahweh's transcendent uniqueness. And Hurtado says this exclusivist monotheism became so fully identified with Jewish piety that by the Roman period, failure to maintain such a stance was perhaps the greatest sin possible. For a Jew to engage in worship of other deities was to abandon Judaism. Now, what they argue is that Christians take this idea that Jesus is God and place it within the identity of God. So he's not another God. It's never counted as, oh, you have God the Father, and then you have a second God who is Jesus, and a third God who is the Holy Spirit. You still have one God, but within the identity of this one God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I think we see this in First Corinthians, uh, chapter 8, 4, 6 where Paul again cites the Shema and talks about one Lord Jesus Christ and one eternal Father. This is not two gods, there's one God and he is three Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So their response, uh, basically he quotes Psalms 82. 257 01:18:05.000 --> 01:18:30.000 Yeah, this is where Heizer comes up, right? Divine council stuff. And most Christians are like, what's about he talking, talking about. And it can kind of throw him off. But what. So people can watch the debate and like it's, it's linked below so we can get into all that. But what strikes me is that and you, your comeback here was actually good when it came to um, uh, I thought it applied here too. When it came to. On the creation stuff they were talking about Collins, was it, 258 01:18:30.000 --> 01:18:33.000 uh. Oh, we could, I don't know that I brought him in here. We could 259 01:18:33.000 --> 01:19:27.000 anyway. But you were, you were saying are you only going to use them here or are you actually taking his views? Because Heiser, the phrase he would use about God, Yahweh, is that he is species unique. Right? Uh, that's his phrase. That's right. And he would, he was very careful and he knew that, that non Christian groups would use his work but was not okay with the way they would use it. And so yeah, Heiser does believe that there are different Elohim. He's defining Elohim as something other than the one true God or something like that. And so he would, he would use Yahweh. And I don't even agree with Heiser on all this stuff, but just want to specify that and maybe he's right and I'm wrong but um, to specify the reason he was being brought up was in response to Jesus being the one true God was to split that out and be like, no, there's multiple gods. Let me quote Heiser for that. Nothing, um, Heiser says can support that. So it was just a very confused comeback. 260 01:19:27.000 --> 01:19:45.000 Heiser's super clear. He says the sons of God are divine beings under the authority of the God of Israel. The biblical writers weren't polytheists, so they might be referred to Elohim lowercase e. He says Yahweh is among the Elohim, but he is superior to all other Elohim. He is their creator and sovereign master. 261 01:19:45.000 --> 01:19:46.000 Right. 262 01:19:46.000 --> 01:20:00.000 So they saw there's either self existent creator and there's Everything else, so that everything else is matter. It's human beings. And these lowercase gods, you're either created or you are the creator. 263 01:20:00.000 --> 01:20:01.000 Yeah. 264 01:20:01.000 --> 01:20:29.000 Now, one, if. Let me bring this full circle and then we can keep going. This might help, but I bring it back to Grant Underwood's book. It's Latter Day Saint theology. Grant Underwood's, uh, book, Latter Day Saint Theology Among Christian theologies, he says, to summarize, several LDs positions stand out as particularly radical. This is on the Trinity, he says the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not simply three string divine hypostasis, but separate embodied beings. 265 01:20:29.000 --> 01:20:30.000 Embodied. Yeah, 266 01:20:30.000 --> 01:21:09.000 embodied. That's really important. Embodied beings, plural gods. So I think that clearly contradicts the first one that the Bible teaches. There's one God. Not in unity. Not this God is just greater than other gods, but one God in being and existence. Even though Father, Son and Holy Spirit are identified as this one God. But then we didn't get into this. I was kind of hoping we did. Grant Underwood's second thing is divine nature and human nature are on the same ontological continuum. So the vast difference, uh, between them is not understood in the classical LDS sense of one of a kind, but of degree. 267 01:21:09.000 --> 01:21:10.000 Yes. 268 01:21:10.000 --> 01:21:12.000 This is hugely important. 269 01:21:12.000 --> 01:21:13.000 Yeah. 270 01:21:13.000 --> 01:21:32.000 And so I was hoping we got into what's the biblical evidence that we are of the same stuff or kind as God. And, and I think there's a lot of biblical evidence against this. Now, the one argument that I've heard that I want to address here, because I actually got a few emails about this and I thought, you know what, we'll address it here, 271 01:21:32.000 --> 01:21:33.000 okay. 272 01:21:33.000 --> 01:21:47.000 Is people often will point towards Acts 17:28, where Paul says we are his offspring, which indicates that we are of the same nature as God. This is how this argument goes. Uh, 273 01:21:47.000 --> 01:21:50.000 or he's quoting a statement about Zeus. 274 01:21:50.000 --> 01:21:51.000 Exactly. 275 01:21:51.000 --> 01:21:53.000 It's a very clever thing that Paul's doing. 276 01:21:53.000 --> 01:21:54.000 Very clever, 277 01:21:54.000 --> 01:21:57.000 but it's not. Yeah. Okay, so what's your, uh, response? 278 01:21:57.000 --> 01:23:41.000 So first, Paul is quoting aretas, who's a 3rd century BCE Stoic poet, and he's written something called the phenomena. And Zeus in this permeates all highways, meeting places, seas and harbors, providing helpful signs and reminding humans of their livelihood through astronomical markers that indicate when they should plant, plow and sow in a kind of pantheistic type fashion. So whether or not these gods and beings in Zeus really exist is not super clear. But there's a pantheistic background to this. That's what stoicism is. And so offspring there is Very different than how Mormons think of offspring. And so in his book Creation Introduction, Tyler Whitman has an interesting quote where he's talking about this passage. He says, according to pagan thought, the divinity or the gods are component pieces of the world. The deities might be the most powerful or important parts, but they are no more than links in the same metaphysical chain as creatures, parts of a larger whole. Since these deities are part of the same cosmic fabric as their worshipers, they may be manipulated by rituals or, um, magical practices that pull on the right threads. So the backdrop when he says we are his offspring, if Paul's affirming that is not affirming this Joseph Smith model that every son has a father and exaltation, that we are the same stuff as God, it's actually affirming that everything is of the same stuff. And there's these deities that manipulate nature and so we can magically try to do some incantation to get them to help us have water at the right time so we can have our crops. 279 01:23:41.000 --> 01:24:00.000 Yeah, yeah. So a tree is also his offspring. If you take that view, which we're not, we're not saying Paul's taking that view either, but hypothetically, then he definitely doesn't teaching that view. But that, that would be if you wanted to consistently apply that principle as though Paul was teaching it. Yeah. So this, this cup is also the same nature as God. 280 01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:48.000 You, you captured it perfectly. So even if Paul is affirming we are his offspring, you don't get the LDS sense of being his offspring. You get this pantheistic stoic sense, which is very different. That I think both LDS and historic Christians would condemn that. Now, of course, is Paul affirming that we are his offspring in the way Stoics take it? The obvious answer is no. I mean, in Acts 17, this is one of the few speeches we have to a non Jewish audience. And he starts by saying that I see you are a very religious people. He's building common ground with them. That's what he's doing. Like any good communicator does is he's building calm ground. Oh, you look for God. I know it's an unknown God, but I see God as well. I'm even going to quote your own poets insofar as I can. 281 01:24:48.000 --> 01:24:49.000 Uh, 282 01:24:48.000 --> 01:25:36.000 and then through the rest of Acts 17, he clearly contrasts why all their views of deities are just completely, uh, fall short of the one true God. That's the point. So he's not affirming the worldview. Even if he were, it wouldn't get us to LDS theology. You could also argue that yenos the word there is more about origin and descent and not even primarily about nature. So when it says we are his offspring, it's not even saying we are of his nature. That's not the point. It's just saying that we come from. And of course, if there's a worldview that says there's some kind of deity, we come from it. I could find common ground insofar as it goes with that worldview. Bottom line, I don't think this argument works. I think it's creative. It's one I hadn't thought of before I really started studying this stuff. 283 01:25:36.000 --> 01:26:28.000 And it strikes me that Paul's actual point in Acts, it conflicts with the point that someone's trying to make with Acts here. So Paul's point is as he approaches the non believing Gentiles and talks to them about their idol worship and he's like, God is not a man that you would, that he would need food and sustenance. He is different than us. He created us. Think of him in uh, the Areopagus, right? He's different than us. He created us and therefore he has no needs. The way that you view these idols as having receiving some kind of sustenance, like there's sacrifices in scripture, but they're not for that purpose. And yet that would push against the idea that God is much like us, just a more advanced version of us. You know, like we're like an embryo compared to an adult, is like us compared to God. You know, once we get fully grown into our potential, then we become like Him. And 284 01:26:28.000 --> 01:26:29.000 um, 285 01:26:29.000 --> 01:26:32.000 it seems to go to conflict with Paul's overall points. 286 01:26:32.000 --> 01:27:24.000 I totally agree. The bottom line is it doesn't work even if Paul is affirming it. But in fact he's not affirming that we are his offspring. So this is a huge difference between LDs and between historic Christians and Jews, that we are on the same ontological level as God. And I spent a lot of time thinking about why do these prompts matter? And it seems to me like if I think God is just exalted beyond I am, but of the same stuff as I am. And I might exalt to a point where people behind me may worship me. That's going to be a very different kind of worship than a God who is self existent in Acts 17 needs nothing. Uh, he is loving his very character. He's all powerful, spoke me into existence. That is a God worth worshiping. 287 01:27:24.000 --> 01:27:25.000 Yeah. 288 01:27:25.000 --> 01:27:47.000 And so these doctrines, I think not only separate Us. And I think the idea that we're on the same ontological plane is not only unbiblical, but it undermines a robust worship. Like we see in Revelation 4 and 5, which we are on our knees worshiping this holy other God who just spread. Spoke us into existence and his love and goodness in his very character. 289 01:27:47.000 --> 01:27:48.000 Yeah, 290 01:27:47.000 --> 01:27:49.000 that's a huge dividing line to me. 291 01:27:49.000 --> 01:27:54.000 Yeah, he's utterly beyond. Just, uh. Just this last Sunday, Eric, uh, Thomas was teaching at our church. 292 01:27:54.000 --> 01:27:55.000 Oh, I love it. 293 01:27:54.000 --> 01:28:44.000 And, um, he was talking about the otherness of God, you know, and God's eternality and how a student had come to him and said, um, I was thinking about how God's eternal and what that really means. He's not just old, he's eternal. And then they were like, I don't know what to do with this. Um, I don't know what to do with this. It's just like, just blowing their minds. And, uh, Eric's response, which was great, I thought, was, uh, that's exactly what you do with it. You do exactly that. Now you stand in awe of God. And I thought, yeah, that's great. Because on the LDS view, it's more as though God is a pioneer. You know, he was. He's. He's like the successful guy who did the thing before me, and I look up to him and I honor him and I. He's dignified and all these things, but. But I'm also trying to follow the same path to be as accomplished as Him. Um, and it's a different thing altogether. Yeah, 294 01:28:44.000 --> 01:28:47.000 I think that's well said. Can I make one more point before we keep going? 295 01:28:47.000 --> 01:28:48.000 Nope. 296 01:28:47.000 --> 01:31:32.000 Is that all right? Um, no. I was like, you're the boss man. This is your show. So I'm not defending strictly the Trinity. I made that clear. But when we think about how the Trinity captures and offers a solution to. To the biblical data, as Greg Koukl says, why does this doctrine matter? Like, why does it matter? Well, the first one is just, you know, John 4:24 says, we worship God in spirit and we worship God in truth. So we can only truly worship God. It's interesting. Spirit is pneuma. And in John, it almost always means the Holy Spirit and truth. Jesus said, I am the truth. He is the true light. So you could argue that worship is a kind of trinitarian experience. And if we're not in the power of the Spirit, accurately understand God, we can't worship God for who he is matters on that level. I also read James White. He's got a great book on the forgotten Trinity. And he says whenever somebody rejects the Trinity, any sect does, you're always going to find some works based kind of salvation. And I might have butchered the exact language behind that. But the idea being, you know, why, like so God the Father totally initiates salvation and he's truly God, sends his Son to pay the debt, fully paid for because Jesus is truly God. And then we now have the Holy Spirit inside of us, not only to secure us in salvation, but to work out that salvation and the transformation of our character. We don't contribute to that. M now we listen and we follow and we obey. I mean the Bible says to work out your salvation, but God is the one who does this through us. So if we don't understand that God is three, there's one God who exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And every act of salvation is from and through God, we're going to think we contribute to it in some fashion. And that's where I think we see that mistake also within Mormonism, the works based contribution to salvation. The last one I think about is, think about this. So God the Father sends his son. So we have infinite worth. Because I know how much you value based on what you sacrifice for. Mhm. Right. You sacrifice to be here. This is important to you. Well, so we have infinite worth because God the Father sends his son. God the Son lays down his life. This is God himself laying down his life. 297 01:31:32.000 --> 01:31:33.000 Immeasurable, 298 01:31:33.000 --> 01:31:56.000 which means not only do we have infinite worth, but we have immeasurable. We are infinitely loved. Then we have the Holy Spirit inside of us who is the infinite God and an infinite power. So I just want to connect some dots for people on the means of salvation, what our value is, the Holy Spirit inside of us. Um, these doctrines really, really matter. 299 01:31:56.000 --> 01:32:55.000 There's a smallness to God in Mormonism and to salvation itself. Even though there's these lofty agendas and exaltation of becoming a God, there's a smallness of what that even means compared to the. Because when you go from basically anything other than the true version of God that we see in scripture to something lesser God, uh, a man who became exalted. The gulf there is infinite between the two things, the two concepts. Um, so there's a sense in which there's a smallness to it. And I wonder if um, a Mormon becoming a real believer in Jesus Christ, a real believer in the true God would find themselves worshiping like never before because they realize the thing that they're worshiping is. Is other. Um, he's glorious. And just the word glory itself means something so much more than what it could have meant before if you were being consistent with your beliefs. 300 01:32:55.000 --> 01:32:58.000 I think that's right. I think you're onto something. 301 01:32:58.000 --> 01:33:00.000 Should we do another one of the clips? 302 01:33:00.000 --> 01:33:09.000 Let's do it. The next one was on the Trinity, so let's skip that one and let's maybe go, just for sake of time, onto one of the latter ones on Creation. X Nihilist. 303 01:33:09.000 --> 01:33:26.000 All right. All right. While we're finding that spot, I want to say you did a great argument from John 1, and I wanted you just to. Just to recap for those who may not see the debate. How did that work about pass about that word? I thought it was a really. It was great because it was so simple and so basic. Um, 304 01:33:26.000 --> 01:33:32.000 let me pull this one up here with my notes. And actually, to be completely honest, 305 01:33:32.000 --> 01:33:38.000 this was on the prompt. Uh, the LDS doctrine of creation is false and unbiblical. And this was about the unbiblical part. 306 01:33:38.000 --> 01:33:49.000 That's correct. Yep, exactly. So this actually also was shaped by Greg Coca. I've got to give him huge props on this one. Is he had. He wrote, uh, like this, wrote this newsletter that he wrote 307 01:33:49.000 --> 01:33:50.000 in the analogy. Is that what you're thinking 308 01:33:50.000 --> 01:35:29.000 about? Yes, exactly. And so if you read John 1:3. 3 in I'll read 1:1 through 3, but we'll focus on the NASB. It says, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him. And apart from him, um, nothing came into being that has come into being. Now, John 1:1 makes it clear. In the beginning was the Word. This is referring to Jesus. Later it makes this clear. The Word is with God. So there's a distinction between God the Father, we're told later, since he's God the Son. But he's also when it says he was with God and He was God, there's equivalence here in terms of the Son, in terms of the Father, he was with God the Father in the beginning. And when it says all things, pos means everything. Everything. It could not give a more universal term for everything than what's used here came into being through Him. Now, there is a distinction between sometimes how the Father and the Son are described as creating. But, uh, creating is a divine prerogative. These lower gods never create. That's important. We see this developed in the book of Isaiah. God, you alone create. So that distinction is distinction without irrelevance to the larger point that needs to be made here. So all things came into being through him. So here's my question. What things came into being through him? And the answer is 309 01:35:29.000 --> 01:35:30.000 all things. All 310 01:35:29.000 --> 01:35:30.000 things. All 311 01:35:30.000 --> 01:35:31.000 things did 312 01:35:30.000 --> 01:35:31.000 cost 313 01:35:31.000 --> 01:35:34.000 everything. I should say all things that came into being. 314 01:35:34.000 --> 01:36:10.000 Okay, yes, but let's, let's bring that back. Because he says first, all things came into being through him. So he gives a universal claim and then he flips it to the Negev and it says, and apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. So the pushback is. Wait a minute. So there might be some things that exist that didn't come into being, that exist alongside him. But John just answered this when he said all things pos came into being through him. Mhm. All things. So there's basically things that came into being and things that didn't come into being. Right. 315 01:36:10.000 --> 01:36:11.000 Uh, 316 01:36:10.000 --> 01:36:13.000 I had this little Jesus figure. I was going to use it. I 317 01:36:13.000 --> 01:36:14.000 was wondering why that was sitting there. 318 01:36:14.000 --> 01:37:29.000 There's a reason. I was going to use it in debate, but I didn't want it to seem like just petty or I was talking down to them. But if you draw a line in the middle and you say things that have come into being and things that did not come into being, where would Jesus go? Jesus would go on the side of things that did not come into being. How do I know this? In the beginning was the word. Mhm. Jesus, I mean, it doesn't use the word self existent, but he is present and he is there, doesn't come into being. And if he brings all things into being, then clearly he didn't come into being. So Jesus would be on the side of a kind of thing that didn't come into being. Where does everything else go, including matter? The answer is on the other side of the napkin of things that came into being. So God, uh, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit alone, eternal self, existent, not caused, no evidence they ever came into being. All other things come into being. Now I didn't get a chance to break down Colossians 1:15, which I think explains this even further. But that was basically the argument that I was making. 319 01:37:29.000 --> 01:37:32.000 Yes. Which I think the reason I like it so much is because it's so simple. 320 01:37:32.000 --> 01:37:33.000 It's very simple, 321 01:37:33.000 --> 01:38:00.000 it's easy to follow. And it's very like that is the purpose of the passage that was to communicate that, um, he's clearly alluding to Genesis. Genesis chapter one. He's using it in the beginning language and he's not talking about what was made, uh, in detail, but, but how it was made in relation to Jesus and uh, through him, which is the. Through language. It's just cool, but too much time to talk about it. Um, okay, so let's play the first clip. 322 01:38:00.000 --> 01:38:01.000 Okay, 323 01:38:00.000 --> 01:38:04.000 Is that cool? Let's play this clip. And thank you, Scotty, for being back there and helping us out. 324 01:38:04.000 --> 01:38:15.000 Well, you're starting to add in these things. Like it's talking about self existence or something like that, but it's not. It clarifies explicitly that not anything was made that was made. Correct. 325 01:38:15.000 --> 01:38:16.000 So 326 01:38:15.000 --> 01:39:13.000 we're talking in the category of made things. And if we put the Bible back into its context and actually somebody who believes and has argued for creation. Ex Neo. Ah. A scholar named Jonathan Goldstein pointed out that in the Platonic worldview that we're working with here that um, they considered there to be an unformed substrate. So these are the waters that we've been talking about before that it's referring to at the end of the beginning. Language in John 1 is that there is being less matter. Things don't have a form, they don't have a shape. So they don't have a being. They haven't been imbued with any sense of being a thing. And so there's this pre existent substrate that then God works with to bring being out of it. So in fact, the way you've described it, I wouldn't know where I disagree with you on it, would just be over that distinction of what are we saying when being's coming out of non being. Are we saying that stuff is coming out of absolutely nothing? Well, famous Greek phase phrase, nothing comes from nothing. 327 01:39:13.000 --> 01:39:15.000 Yeah. Lucretius century. 328 01:39:15.000 --> 01:39:42.000 Yeah. So they believe that there was some sort of substrate material, substrate that sometimes they called invisible, that sometimes they called non being. And I could see how from like a 21st century perspective, it'd be like, oh, that's creation X nilo. But when you look at the, uh, context that they're living in, they have this idea of a actual kind of matter that, that they call non being that they call invisible. 329 01:39:42.000 --> 01:39:43.000 There's a lot going on there. 330 01:39:43.000 --> 01:39:44.000 There is a lot. 331 01:39:43.000 --> 01:39:55.000 Can I just. Before you share on it. So it sounded like he was saying, I've heard this, this clip three times, four times now, because I listened to the debate more than once just as to prepare us for this. 332 01:39:55.000 --> 01:39:56.000 I'm impressed. 333 01:39:56.000 --> 01:40:16.000 But, um, but it sounds like he's saying there's this Platonic concept where there was this stuff he Calls it like substrate of, um. But. But the way he describes it's important to make his argument. He describes it as things that aren't things. 334 01:40:16.000 --> 01:40:17.000 Yes. I 335 01:40:17.000 --> 01:40:37.000 mean, this is what. These are the words he used, not in the exact order, but these are. The world was made out of things that do not have being and aren't things. Mhm. And I'm like, he can't even use language to express the strangeness of what he's trying to communicate. Um, he's not talking about Platonic abstract objects. 336 01:40:37.000 --> 01:40:38.000 Definitely not. 337 01:40:37.000 --> 01:40:45.000 He's not. He's talking about the waters in Genesis as if they were. This is a view of Genesis I don't hold. Right, yes, 338 01:40:45.000 --> 01:40:46.000 I 339 01:40:45.000 --> 01:41:14.000 agree. Yeah. God had this sort of already existing material that he used to form the earth. Okay. But he's. His argument for it to be successful requires that that stuff doesn't have the property of being. And that to me seems wild to argue that. The waters of Genesis, if you take the view, I don't even take of Genesis, that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. Those waters don't have being and aren't a thing. That seems to be the core of his argument. 340 01:41:14.000 --> 01:43:06.000 I think that's right. And there may be some precedent for such a view in kind of the Platonic, Middle Platonic world of that time. So I wouldn't totally say he's wrong about that. I still don't understand exactly how coherent it is. But if that view was held, fine. The question is, is John assuming that worldview when he writes John 1:1? First off, I don't see it anywhere in the text. Now, of course, he uses the term logos or logos. Of course, that's the idea of reason and the word to. To communicate in that culture. But one thing we know that scholarship agrees on pretty heavily is that Christianity is rooted in a Jewish and Judaism worldview communicating in a Hellenistic culture. But that's the language that it's speaking from. That's where it gets its backdrop. In fact, I had a quote in here I could pull up from Janice Saskas in her book. Uh, she has a chapter in the book Creation out of Nothing, which is from Baylor Press, where she's like, we need to stop talking about how much the Greek influence had on Christianity and talk about the influence Christianity had on the Greek world. We need to frame it differently. I think she's right about that. So I don't see any evidence in the text that that's what John is pulling from. So I think he's reading into it there. Um, so let me take a step back. When it comes to creation ex nihilo, there's different ways to get there. What I mean by that is what I was hoping to get to. It didn't happen this way. Is the philosophical argument, the impossibility of traversing an infinite. The scientific evidence we didn't even turn to like the second law of thermodynamics. Mhm. 341 01:43:06.000 --> 01:43:08.000 Or the expanding universe, 342 01:43:08.000 --> 01:43:34.000 the red shift, the expansion universe. I mean, this is one of the shocking discoveries in the 20th century, which it was around 1917, when Einstein kind of applies his general theory of relativity into cosmology. Is like, oh, we don't have a static universe. And of course, if the Book of Mormon is written in 1830, Joseph Smith was not aware of this. So, uh, of course he held an eternal universe before some of this comes out. 343 01:43:34.000 --> 01:43:36.000 Yeah, it was the dominant view at the time. 344 01:43:36.000 --> 01:44:24.000 That was the scientific view. Yeah, it was basically Jews and Muslims and Christians who held back against that. But in the wider culture, yes, it was the scientific dominant view in the 19th century. So the scientific evidence, uh, I mean, it is stunning. People talk about this that aren't even Christians. Like, this fulfills Genesis 1:1. And this is creation out of nothing. So you have philosophical, you have scientific. I think you have biblical. But you also have theological evidence for creation ex nihilo. So one of the people we might get to pushed back on Genesis 1 being used to argue for creation ex nihilo. Part of me goes, fine, for the sake of conversation, not that I want to give up Genesis 1:1, but you could have it for sake of conversation. 345 01:44:24.000 --> 01:44:37.000 I actually agree with that move because it just bogged down and slowed things down to stick in Genesis 1. And you're like, I'm talking about John 1. And they're like, that's not. That's cute. What about Genesis? And, uh, I thought more time in John would have been awesome. Yeah, 346 01:44:37.000 --> 01:45:39.000 I would have loved to spend more time John. And by the way, like, one of the other things to learn in this is there are some complexities on some of these issues. I didn't realize getting into the Hebrew and the Septuagint, these are really sophisticated conversations. I'm not a Hebrew scholar. I'm not going to pretend that I am. So you can get there biblically and we can circle back to some of these passages. We didn't get to Colossians 1. We didn't get the Hebrews 11 3. There's some other passages that I think point towards creation ex nihilo. But A lot of where theologians like Maimonides in the 12th century, one of the most influential Jewish philosophers of all time, he doesn't actually think Genesis 1:1 gets us there. People argue theologically to creation ex nihilo. Um, so for example that God alone is the creator. Like Isaiah 44:24, I am the Lord who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens. So if God alone is the creator, it seems to say there's something alone and soul about God's existence distinct from everything else. 347 01:45:39.000 --> 01:45:40.000 Yeah, 348 01:45:40.000 --> 01:47:31.000 there's also the move that God alone is eternal, self existent and unchanging. In Exodus 3 I am M who I am. There's something self existent about God. Psalms 102 that talks about it compares and contrasts. And of course Hebrews 1 brings Psalm 102 back in to talk about Jesus. But how like God creates the foundations of the earth, they will pass away. But you are the same, your years have no end. And so things are fleeting in the material world, but God has no end, he's eternal. Arguments like God being all powerful people pointed towards this all the time arguing for creation ex nihilo. Jeremiah 32:17 Nothing is too hard for you. Job 42:2, I know you can do all things. And then God creates by his Word, not pre existing material. Psalms 33:6 by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and the breath of his mouth all their host. So we didn't even get to some of these theological points. And I think Paul Copan has argued, I think pretty convincingly, that uh, a God who creates with existing matter, it undermines certain attributes of God. And this concerns people, historically speaking, biblically, Christians and Jews, as much or more than some of the actual passages as far as I can tell. So here's some of the arguments that it would undermine. It would undermine God's aseity. So is God alone self existent? And we see this with like Plato and the forms, does goodness exist? And outside of God you can't have this thing goodness, even if it's not material outside of God. Right. So Christians are like, no, it's within his character. Mhm. And our commandments come from duties that he gives us. So there's nothing that exists outside of God. Well it's worse for God to say it. If you have matter that's eternal and existing, 349 01:47:31.000 --> 01:47:32.000 it also is 350 01:47:31.000 --> 01:47:33.000 outside of Him. 351 01:47:33.000 --> 01:47:34.000 Effectively, 352 01:47:34.000 --> 01:47:35.000 matter has a satiety. 353 01:47:35.000 --> 01:47:36.000 Everything has a satiety. 354 01:47:36.000 --> 01:47:37.000 That's right. In 355 01:47:37.000 --> 01:47:52.000 fact, on m Mormonism, you, you and me have a satiety. We all do we do in the form of intelligences? Good luck figuring out what that is. Um, but that's the word that they can't agree on that they'll use. So everything has a satiety. It's not divine, a satiety, it's just a satiety. 356 01:47:52.000 --> 01:49:09.000 I think that's right. So it challenges that. Of course it challenges. One of the things Paul Kapan argues is God's omnipotence. So God couldn't create without existing material alongside of him. Like if he wants to create, oh my goodness, I'm so fortunate that there happens to be this matter that I can just form that's already here. I mean it's just kind of an interesting of like lucky that, you know, matter happens to exist. And again, Tyler Whitman's book, Creation Introduction, he goes, there's no eternal stuff or material lying around God that limits what he can do, the way materials dictate what an artist can do with them. Every artist must respect the possibilities and limitations of the materials he or she uses. This is true of any art form and any material. No matter how proficient and brilliant an artist, God didn't stumble across a cosmic heap of intractable materials and think to create what he could with them. So I think that raises other issues. And Paul Copan argues that it's a kind of idolatry when you have this self existing matter alongside God. So we can go wherever you want with these passages, but I think we didn't even get to talk about some of the theological issues that has really driven the church towards creation ex nihilo, uh, as much as anything before the scientific discoveries, by the way. 357 01:49:09.000 --> 01:49:36.000 Right. Well, so I have a question about this. When, when he's responding to you and he says, I, we pretty much agree and I understand why he was saying he thinks you guys agree pretty, um much. And it was, he's saying God did make everything, but, uh, but his version of make is different than your version of make. That's right. And that's the whole debate. That's right. Created like it didn't exist and then now it exists. And he's like, well, it didn't exist in that form and now it exists in that form. 358 01:49:36.000 --> 01:49:37.000 Um, yep. 359 01:49:37.000 --> 01:50:19.000 But my understanding of Mormon theology is that that's not even true. On Mormon theology, God didn't create everything. You could say he created everything that we're dealing with in our experience as humans. But where was Kolob, who made Kolob? Right. Where God supposedly existed as a man before he became a God. Uh, that, at least from what I can tell on Mormon sources, is a distant location in the universe that obviously God didn't make, that His God must have made. And then when you become a God, you can. You can also make your own stuff. And so God doesn't make everything on Mormonism. So it just seemed to me that even that I don't know what he meant when he said that. Do you know what he meant when he said that? 360 01:50:19.000 --> 01:51:02.000 I'm not certain. I don't want to put words in his mouth. When I guess what a lot of them say, and they're like, no, that's not what I mean a few times. So I don't want to do that again. Uh, but you're raising a really interesting point, because if you go back to John 1:3, it says all things came into being through him. And yet on Mormonism, each God can have a kind of creation as we go from this eternal progression, which would mean all things relevant to us in our world, but not really all things doesn't seem to be qualified that way in John 1:3. It seems to be as universal as it can be. So you're just going to have to qualify it in a way here that I don't think John was remotely intending. 361 01:51:02.000 --> 01:51:17.000 So to get inside this debate, honestly, if you really try to look at it from the perspective of the Mormons, it gets. Gives you a glimpse inside of what it's like to have been Mormon for years and to have that. Because when you read All Things Were Made through Him, all can't really mean all. 362 01:51:17.000 --> 01:51:18.000 That's right. 363 01:51:18.000 --> 01:51:53.000 Things doesn't really mean things. Through doesn't really mean through. And him doesn't even mean him. Like, these are different definitions for every single one of those things. And it creates a huge obstacle for Mormons. Even if they leave Mormonism, they often carry. Carry with him this baggage of all these wrong conceptions of biblical concepts. And it can take a very long time to like, sort of unpack that for years and years and years. And, um, I mean, my heart goes out, out to them for this. It's. It's easier to learn Christianity from nothing than it is to learn it from Mormonism. 364 01:51:53.000 --> 01:51:58.000 Oh, that's really interesting. Now, I have a ton of questions in light of what you said, because there's difference in not understanding God. 365 01:51:58.000 --> 01:51:59.000 Yeah. 366 01:51:58.000 --> 01:52:08.000 And have an errant understanding of God that has just been so built into you your whole life. That's a fair. That's a fair point. 367 01:52:08.000 --> 01:52:52.000 One of the uses of genomia throughout the New Testament is the word that's used in John 1:3 is when Satan is tempting Jesus to make. To make genomi, a rock into bread. Right. So that's an instance where Satan is tempting Jesus to create something new out of something else that exists using existing material. He's not saying, hey, just create bread. And this is actually something that's really interesting that I wanted to point out. I was thinking about this today when I was driving down and it's. I was trying to think outside of Genesis 1 and John 1. What other instances of creation does even Christ participate in? Maybe in the New Testament or creation 368 01:52:52.000 --> 01:53:19.000 like things. And there are three instances that I think about. One is what I just pointed out, the stone with the bread, where Satan is tempting him to do something. Uh, that. That. Yeah, to do something within his power, which would be turning the stone into bread. Uh, the other instance is water to wine. Jesus doesn't say, hey, I need you to bring me these empty pots and I'm going to create out of nothing wine. He tells them to go fill up water and then bring water there. The 369 01:53:19.000 --> 01:53:47.000 other instance isn't, hey, I need you to bring me 12 baskets that are empty and I'm going to make food appear. Go feed everybody, let's have a picnic. No, what he does is he. He gets five loaves and two fishes, existing material, and then he does what God does and he multiplies it. So what. Uh, I. The reason why that's important is because I think it shows that the New Testament writers do not presuppose that Jesus, when he 370 01:53:47.000 --> 01:53:56.000 creates or participates in a creative act, does it out of nothing. In all of those instances he is making out of existing material. 371 01:53:56.000 --> 01:53:58.000 Yeah. This is a really interesting argument. 372 01:53:58.000 --> 01:53:59.000 Yeah. 373 01:53:59.000 --> 01:54:26.000 Ah, very. Uh. You feel the weight of it, right? Because. But it, uh. I'll just acknowledge it begins by ignoring the event. We're focusing on the creation of the world in Genesis and John and says, I'm going to try to draw a parallel to creative acts of some kind that Jesus did and say if he did it this way with the bread and the wine, then that's probably how he made the universe. So that's the part of the weaker part of the argument. But yeah. What's your response to this? 374 01:54:26.000 --> 01:56:18.000 I'm glad you brought that up because his argument kind of assumes that if God did create ex nihilo, then after the world is here and he forms it, we would see him continuing to do ex nihilo things. But that's an assumption. I don't know why we should accept that assumption. Now before I respond, I got to give it to Hayden. I thought that was the single best response of the whole three plus hours. I thought he was. He had a smile on his face. He started off by really complimenting me and it felt sincere. Uh, I thought he did a great job. I think Christians can watch him and learn a lot from how he carried himself and prepared. And so I want to give him his due on this in the moment. I didn't respond to this and you're making these split second decisions. And so here's what I would have said. My argument from John 3, John 1:3 is not from Yemi, the word itself. So I think he's right that if you take the word itself, there are times where like say a rock into bread, something begins to exist. It becomes. But there's a material substrate underneath it. But he gave three examples. Interesting. One, rock to bread. What does God use to form from the rock is clearly stated. We're given example that the rock is there. Second example, water to wine. We're specifically told there's water and he forms wine. Third example is fish and loaves. He multiplies fish and loaves. Are there all three of these? We are clearly and explicitly told that there is matter that Jesus takes into something new and becoming. What is mentioned in John 1:1:3 and the answer is God alone. 375 01:56:18.000 --> 01:56:19.000 Yeah, 376 01:56:19.000 --> 01:57:07.000 it is not mentioned. Now you have to point towards like uh, like Luke did before him, this Platonic worldview. And, and this is assumed. It is not stated. It's not stated. So at the end of this he, Hayden gave a little speech. I did not have time to respond. It was irrelevant to the prompt about the God who creates ex nihilo is evil and he's off base. And like he that was planned at the end, which is fine, I get it. But I think that frankly is irrelevant to the prompt itself. And I literally had no time to respond uh, to that. But here in all three examples that he gave, we have a clear case of a material substrate that exists. And interestingly in the third one he takes a handful of fish and does what? Multiplies it. 377 01:57:07.000 --> 01:57:13.000 Right. I was trying to think of mechanistically if we're going to call that creating out of existing matter. 378 01:57:13.000 --> 01:57:14.000 Yeah, 379 01:57:14.000 --> 01:57:20.000 that's confusing to me that two fish are made out of one fish. That's an increase in material. 380 01:57:20.000 --> 01:57:22.000 It is an increase. 381 01:57:22.000 --> 01:57:47.000 To the best of my understanding, this is a massive increase in actual matter, not just a changing of form. Whereas the water to wine, it'd Be easier to argue. I don't know the chemical makeup of wine versus water. H2O. Can you get from H2O these other things by manipulating them? I don't know. But you can't get fish to feed thousands of people out of two fish without an increase in actual material. 382 01:57:47.000 --> 01:58:24.000 I think that's exactly right. So if God creates ex nihilo, he doesn't have to create after that. Ex nihilo. That's an assumption. But here's kind of an example of him saying, okay, I'm going to take something that exists. And he used the word multiply. So this is not like clay. I'm going to make a death star and then change it into a lightsaber. But it's the same amount of clay. He is bringing stuff into existence by beyond the matter that is there. That sounds a lot closer to kratio ex nihilo than it does just from existing material. So it's interesting that he used that example. 383 01:58:24.000 --> 01:58:40.000 And theologically the implication of his perspective here is that Jesus could not have done it. Mhm. Apart from existing matter being manipulated, which is an additional burden you're putting upon the text. That is definitely not clear there. 384 01:58:40.000 --> 01:59:03.000 And that reminds me of in Acts chapter 17, specifically back to this speech, when he makes the point, does God need anything? And the answer is that God doesn't need anything. He's not dependent upon anything. So the implication is, does God need this matter to make the fish and loaves? Did Jesus really need that? 385 01:59:03.000 --> 01:59:04.000 Yeah, 386 01:59:04.000 --> 01:59:32.000 I think when we look at his life and character and especially Hebrews 1 and Colossians 1, which I think I want to at least highlight, highlight that here, I think we have no reason to believe that that's the case. But I think in his three examples, these are all within creation and God is working with people. Like why doesn't God just make it poof into existence? Well, because he's partnering with us. He doesn't partner with us in bringing matter into existence because God alone does that. And the Bible makes it clear. 387 01:59:32.000 --> 01:59:33.000 Right. Um, 388 01:59:33.000 --> 02:00:22.000 but he wants us to show some faith by getting the water. He wants us to see, see his power in a unique way. So there's theological reasons why God would do this. We wouldn't expect him to do creation ex nihilo. But I think, I think Colossians one, I wish we had time to go to this passage, but I think this one is even more explicit on top of John 1 where it says, so this is 15 through 17. He Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things poss were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. Whether thrones or dominions or rules or authorities, all things pos were created through him and for Him. And so he is before all things poss and in him all things hold together. 389 02:00:22.000 --> 02:00:34.000 Yeah. What's the substrate that doesn't, you know, that God could make things from? That isn't discussed in that passage. Visible, invisible. 390 02:00:34.000 --> 02:00:35.000 It's. 391 02:00:34.000 --> 02:00:39.000 There's. Okay, there's. Let's. Philosophically, let's take two categories. There are things which are visible, 392 02:00:39.000 --> 02:00:40.000 and 393 02:00:39.000 --> 02:01:03.000 there are things that are not visible. And God made both of those categories through Jesus. So what material that the universe was made out of that God used to make the universe doesn't fall into either the category visible or invisible. I, uh, don't understand how. Like you said, this is a great passage to make this point. I don't see how you can get out of it. 394 02:01:03.000 --> 02:01:16.000 Well, they're going to make a distinction between visible not meaning immaterial. Because of our sinfulness, we just can't see them. That's what the argument is going to be. 395 02:01:16.000 --> 02:01:36.000 It would seem irrelevant because you'd still have two categories of the things you can see through whatever means you're thinking of. Visible means or the things that are not visible. And, well, what are the waters in Genesis? Are they visible or not visible? Whichever your answer is, that was made through Jesus too. You can't really get around it. 396 02:01:36.000 --> 02:01:39.000 I think that's right. I think it brings it back full circle. 397 02:01:39.000 --> 02:01:41.000 So here's a quick thought I have about this before you share 398 02:01:41.000 --> 02:01:43.000 your answer. Yeah, no, tell me. Um, 399 02:01:43.000 --> 02:02:05.000 let's take the m. Miracles of Jesus. These three miracles of Jesus, and you've got the fish. Okay, now can you take what John said about the creation or what Colossians says about creation and apply that to the miracles of the fish? And if you take, like, let's say John, all things were made through him and nothing that was made. Uh, wait, what? How's the text go? 400 02:02:05.000 --> 02:02:16.000 Uh, pull it back if you want me again. John 1:3. Right. John 1.3. It says all things were made through him and without him, not anything made that was made. 401 02:02:16.000 --> 02:03:10.000 Okay, so if I take the loaves and the fish and I say now. So this is supposed to be an illustration of that principle. If you're going to say this is how creation happened. Um, so these fish and loaves are those made. This m is him not using some. Some mystical substrate of goopy early pre. Universal stuff. This is. This is loaves and fish. Like these are clearly the things to discussed in John 1. And then he's using them to. But the water, was that. Is that made. That was made by God. At this point in time, when the water is being put into these containers, that was made by God. Right. So what I'm suggesting is you can't use these as parallels for John 1, because John 1 specifically refutes even those examples themselves. So it is. It is. Isages. It is. I'm going to take something that is obviously not what John1's describing, and I'm going to use it to reinterpret John 1 to mean the opposite of what it's actually saying. 402 02:03:10.000 --> 02:04:08.000 That's interesting. I not thought of that. And I think we got to remember this is in the prologue, John 1, 1, 18. Um, that is framing the rest of the book. So we've got to interpret the rest of the book. Like when it says God is spirit. What do we mean by Spirit in light of John 1, where God is. Start being very clear. In the beginning was the Word, The Word was with God, the Word was God. So God the Father, God the Son. Now we know the Holy Spirit is there, not from John 1, from elsewhere. But it's making the point that God exists in the beginning. He's not caused by anything. He's distinct from the Father, but one with the Father in terms of being God. And then it describes him taking on human flesh in verse 14, which of course is the incarnation. So that prologue needs to shape the way we interpret the rest of what Jesus does. Arguably not the other way around, at least when it comes to the Gospel of John. 403 02:04:08.000 --> 02:04:18.000 Yeah, good point. Okay, we're about out of time. So, um, what do we want to do? Really quick before. Do you want to look at the last clip? Do you want to share some things? 404 02:04:18.000 --> 02:04:33.000 Um, gosh, good question. I don't remember what the last clip is. I think we've sufficiently responded to most of these clips. There's other stuff in here we didn't get to and other objections. Like, I'm sure they're like, wait, you didn't answer this. 405 02:04:33.000 --> 02:06:00.000 Yeah, fair enough. I want to know. Um, you brought this up earlier, uh, for. So there's. There's a lot of debate going on right now. There's a lot of these, like one against 50 million and people who disagree with them. That kind of thing's happening a lot. Um, one of the things that we're seeing happen as well, this is not about Mormonism at all. This is just about the, the online discourse. Right? Um, the way in which Christians conduct themselves in these discussions is of concern to me. I just did a teaching on humility, um, and I kept thinking about online engagement, uh, for people who are representing Jesus Christ and how we want boldness. And there's some who've pushed back against winsomeness. And I think it's fair. I think that it was good to push back to some degree against winsomeness, but they pushed back so hard, they've forgotten humility, um, and the way they conduct themselves. And so what do you think? Because you were obviously extremely careful with this. You know, Sean, you're really careful with the way you conduct yourself. You're careful with your words. Um, for Christians who want to do more of the kind of thing that you just did, what advice would you give for how to conduct yourself so that you could be honoring Christ and representing him well? But you're also dealing with sometimes incredibly hostile individuals, people who are caustic and people who are saying ridiculous things in the ears of audience members that might believe them if you don't really strike it down. So I don't know if you have any tips on that. 406 02:06:00.000 --> 02:06:35.000 So I'm somewhat torn on this because we need a lot of Christians to step into the space. If we don't, then Latter Day Saints and Unitarians and Muslims step into the space. But I also remember hearing William Lane Craig talk about debating, and he's like, to, uh, a class, he's like, most of you just should not do this if you're not trained and you can't do your homework, and this is not your skill. Skill set. And that doesn't mean it's better or worse than anything else. Don't do it. Only a select few people should do it. And of course, William and Craig is the ninja, uh, of debating. 407 02:06:35.000 --> 02:06:36.000 Extremely good. 408 02:06:35.000 --> 02:07:24.000 So I see a lot of people stepping into this space. I'm not going to name names here that, A, don't know their stuff, B, I don't think have the right posture. I specifically saw some debates preparing for this, and I thought the LDS clearly won this. They were more prepared, they were more gracious. I mean, when somebody starts getting flustered, you know that they've lost the argument. And I've seen Christians do that and insult back. And so partly I want to say, unless you really have theological chops, and there's some people who do this really well. What's his name? Scotty. I haven't met him. What is it? Ryan. Uh, Ryan. I Mean, this guy handles. He knows his theology and he's calm and is like a ninja out there in this setting. You need to know your stuff. 409 02:07:24.000 --> 02:07:25.000 Yeah. 410 02:07:25.000 --> 02:08:01.000 And so if you're going to do this partly, I'd say ask people around you, hey, how well do I know my stuff? Can I take on 6, 8, 10 people for 3 to 5 hours and be respectful in the dialogue and advance the argument? So I'm torn because we need people to step into this. But one of the reasons I did it is I just, I saw some Christians do it well, but not a lot do it well in this space. Obviously, God logic is amazing in this space. Like, he's just fearless, takes anybody on, and he has his own unique approach in which he does this. 411 02:08:01.000 --> 02:08:02.000 Super talented at it. 412 02:08:02.000 --> 02:08:07.000 So talented. And Islam is different, the way they engage than Mormons do. 413 02:08:07.000 --> 02:08:17.000 Granted it is. And I don't have like a one rule, like if someone's got a little snarky or they got a little bit in your face, I'm not necessarily saying that that was wrong or a character issue of. 414 02:08:17.000 --> 02:08:18.000 Yeah. 415 02:08:17.000 --> 02:08:56.000 My concern is those who appear to have just given up any concern for godly character because they just have an agenda like, um, no, I'm going to win. We need to win. We need to win at all costs. And I said, now there are costs, that it's not worth it. And I look at these scriptures and I feel convicted about it personally, as I read them about like, you know, the servant of God, be this, this, this and this, and interact with those who oppose you and things like this. And Jesus, he rebukes the Pharisees. He's bold, he's in their face. He calls them sons of, uh, sons of hell. I mean, he calls them those things, but he didn't do it like an arrogant child. And, um, so I'm not here, I'm not here trying to call somebody out without using their name. 416 02:08:56.000 --> 02:08:57.000 I'm not 417 02:08:57.000 --> 02:08:59.000 afraid to use names at all. Yeah. I'm just concerned about. 418 02:08:59.000 --> 02:09:00.000 We know you're not afraid. 419 02:09:00.000 --> 02:09:20.000 Yeah. I'm concerned about the spirit of the age. Right. Yeah. In that regard. But. Okay, but one more thing, and I want to let you share, but I'm going to ask you one last question I'll probably for. I'm going to give you. Tell you now, share what you're going to share, and then you can answer my last question, which is going to be, uh, what would you say to Mormons who have followed this video up till this point? I just want to let you share with Them. 420 02:09:20.000 --> 02:10:49.000 Oh, sure, I'd be happy to, uh, I guess I would say be very prayerful in terms of how you approach it. Make sure that you have the right training, ask people around you how well that you can, you can do this and train and prep. Uh, like, I'm busy. I'm running a. I'm a full time professor. I speak, I write. And so I had to find time to do this. And I was really disciplined. There's probably nothing I've done in my life, Mike, where I learned more than doing this. Because when you think about going up against eight people and you can tell, like, they came prepared, they knew their stuff. I was impressed with them on a lot of levels is you got to do your homework. And so don't do this for clicks, don't do this for views. I think there's a lot of people, like, I'll be on this popular podcast. I'll just push back and I'll be fine. I'm like, this is not too much is at stake. And if you cannot be an ambassador who is kind and gentle and yet firm and advance your arguments, then don't do it. Don't do it. The only thing that concerns you about this is I do wonder how much people watching this really are able to decipher between the arguments of the Greek that's used in the Hebrew. And does do these kind of debates make the audience think, well, the. They're smart Muslims, they're smart Mormons, they're smart Christians, they're smart atheists. We can't know everything. And that's why if you just do this and at least don't make good arguments and make people think, arguably it could undermine the larger goal of what we want to accomplish. 421 02:10:49.000 --> 02:11:13.000 That's all good points. Okay. Because of time. I'm just not going to say anything else, but I'm going to ask you. Okay, let's say there's a Mormon. He watched the debate. He's maybe he's on the fence, maybe he's doubting some things. Um, maybe he's thinking, like, personally offended at some of the things that were shared and have been said about Mormonism and all this. But, uh, if you could talk directly to that person, we'll close with this. What would you say to them? 422 02:11:13.000 --> 02:13:00.000 Well, I'm gonna look at you as if you're that Mormon because it's awkward to look at the screen, but I would look at this Mormon. I would rightly say that I love you and I really do. Some of my best friends growing up Were and are Mormons. I respect them, the way they live their lives, their job, their family. There's not a shred of inside of me that has any animus at all towards Mormons. If that came through, either I just was hungry or tired for going three and a half hours, whatever. But that is not reflection of my heart. I deeply care about you and I have huge respect for you. And I really hope that came through in this video and came through in that video. I would say to pray about this. I agree with Mormons that we should pray about spiritual things, but I'd say two other things. I'd say get in the scriptures and read the New Testament. In my experience, when I talk with, uh, a lot of Latter Day Saints, they know the Book of Mormon well. They know some of the current teachings of maybe the prophets in general, you know, counsel kind of content. But really knowing the teachings of Jesus. Read the Gospel of John and just try to read it without certain blinders and ask yourself, what does this really teach? I do that, Mike. I do that all the time. I'm reading, going, okay, what blind spots do I have? What assumptions am I bringing? Do I really understand what John and Paul and Jesus meant here? I'm constantly questioning that. I would get into the Scriptures, I would read it with that kind of spirit. And I think if you really have an open heart and an open mind, you might be surprised what you think when you jump into the New Testament. 423 02:13:00.000 --> 02:13:03.000 Yeah. Awesome. All right, well, Sean, I think you did a great job. 424 02:13:03.000 --> 02:13:05.000 I appreciate it. 425 02:13:05.000 --> 02:13:07.000 And, uh, I was a little nervous about it myself. 426 02:13:07.000 --> 02:13:09.000 Nervous about this discussion or my debate? No, 427 02:13:09.000 --> 02:13:19.000 no, no, the debate. Well, I feel that way about any one of these things because I know how important they are. Um, and it's not about confidence in people at all. It's about the weight of it. Uh, 428 02:13:19.000 --> 02:13:20.000 there is a weight. 429 02:13:19.000 --> 02:13:31.000 And so we care about people's eternal souls. Um, but I think it went very well. And I actually appreciate the Mormons that were on there because they conducted themselves largely in a very good way. 430 02:13:31.000 --> 02:13:32.000 Totally.